“Life goes on, whether you like it or not. I just wished it could lurch forward. Time is the best doctor, they say, and thats bullshit, because from certain pains you can never heal. They keep screa...”

“Maybe that was what being together with someone really meant. It meant seeing past the idealization you had of them, embracing their flaws and fears, helping them to overcome them, waiting for them...”

“Everything seemed less frightening with music, even more so with music I knew by heart. It forced a familiar perspective on the scary unknown that was about to happen.”

“Maybe beauty had nothing to do with the garbage TV tried to sell us. It was more a matter of confidence. Either way, I had none.”

“Depression is a physical illness, like bleeding from a wound that wont close. You cannot fix it, it doesnt heal.”

“Sometimes, when you want to help a broken person, your attempts only remind them of their missing pieces.”

“When a character comes to life, its like meeting a new friend for the first time.”

“But all I could see was her. No skill of mine, no artist anywhere, couldve immortalized how gorgeous she was. It was impossible to believe shed ever had any doubts about her body. The firelight sho...”

“Look, I'm not going to have sex with him just so he'll say that he loves me, you know?"...That isn't why I was planning to have sex with Rob - to hear the words, I mean. I just wanted to get it ove...”

“Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous embarkation and heroic conquest, or...”

“He didn't know all that much about how the machinery worked anyway. Such knowledge was for specialists. In war, as in love, he was a fearless, happy-go-lucky adventurer.”

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”

“Lesson one: expect to get screwed over for the convenience of others on a regular basis.”

“All this bunch of so-called 'adults' was doing was making enemies of one another when what they really needed to be concentrating on was how to get out alive.”

“Now you're an adult, Katya!" he'd said, picking her up under the armpits like he'd been doing since she'd been born.”