“I didn't want to die. I just found death soothing to think about.”

“No amount of wishing will bring back the dead.”

“What else could have happened? Car wouldn't start? House caught on fire? Escaped convict climbed through his bedroom window and tied him with duct tape? Poison eggnog? Or maybe I just didn't matter...”

“The students adore your father,' a perfumed woman said to me. 'Aren't you lucky to live with such a charming man!''He's even more charming at home,' Mom said. 'Isn't he, Bea? He rides a unicycle th...”

“I might have been made of metal once, but not anymore. Like Pinocchio, I'd turned into a real girl. So far it sucked. But there was nothing I could do about it.”

“I think ghostliness is a good quality. I pretend I'm dead all the time." "What?" He stopped rummaging through his locker to look at me full in the face a last."It helps me go to sleep," I said."Tha...”

“Obedient to no man, dependent only on weather and season, without a goal before them or a roof above them, owning nothing, open to every whim of fate, the homeless wanderers lead their childlike, b...”

“You cant confuse childlike faith with childish thinking.”

“The enduring rapture with magic and fable has always struck me as latently childish and somehow sexless (and thus also related to childlessness).”

“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.”