“She also understood there was a hole in her heart where her son should be, that she was a wicked, selfish woman for wishing him back.”

“She was no stripper with a heart of gold, that was for sure. A heart of steel, more like.”

“Its not like I planned it. I never woke up from some rosy dream and said, Okay, world, today Im gonna spaz.”

“We didnt want to admit it then, but we were friends. Best friends.”

“A woman brings so much more to the world than birth, for she can birth discovery, intelligence, invention, art, just as well as any man.”

“Using ones beauty was the only way a smart girl could get by, at least thats how it was back then, though even for a smart girl there were really only three professions. You could be a nurse or a t...”

“Someday those bruises inside you will heal. You can't know when someday will come, or what life will look like when it finally does. ... But in a way it doesn't even matter because someday isn't wh...”

“Not all forms of abuse leave bruises.”

“and I wanted this girl who was like no girl I had ever known, wanted her not in spite of her moods and her secret bruises and her sad attempts at artifice but because of them, because of them all.”

“Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.”

“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it al...”

“The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.”