“To her, not packing our lunches every day or joining the PTA is a feminist rallying cry.”

“Inside my chest, my lungs are wild animals, clawing at the cage."Oh, man," Autumn mumbles from beside me. "His smile makes me stupid."Her words are a dim echo of my own thoughts: His smile ruins me...”

“His voice is both low and quiet, and it has this hypnotic rhythm to it. I wonder whether someday he'll give sermons with that voice, whether he'll throw down judgement with that voice.”

“We're only three class sessions in and I'm already behind? And to hear it from him? This buttoned-up Bible-thumper I can't get out of my head?”

“High school is such an incestuous little pool.”

“He's not recruiting me to the oiled-up Gay Bliss Club of Northern Utah, but to the LDS Church.”

“The future for me is already a thing of the past -You were my first love and you will be my last”

“He smiles at me, and I am suddenly seventeen again - the year I realize that love doesn't follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable”

“A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.”

“The heart was made to be broken.”

“He does something to me, that boy. Every time. Its his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.”

“Was it hard?" I ask.Letting go?"Not as hard as holding on to something that wasn't real.”

“Gabriel.' I'm so close to him our lips are almost touching, and then I move closer so our lips are touching as I say his name again. It's like a kiss but it's not really a kiss. And it's nice and I...”

“Anna's voice wasn't a beautiful voice - rough edged and sorrowful, a bit used, somehow male and female at once. Yet it had more vibrancy to it than most Danish voices, which were often thin and whi...”

“Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me-so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in t...”