“It was worth it," Faye says after school while she walks me to my car. "It's not fair that you take all the shit for this while the guys get to walk around like nothing happened. They're just as mu...”

“Virginity is supposed to be something a girl gives up only when she is ready and feels comfortable, something a girl discusses at length with her friends and flip-flops over a million times in her ...”

“I roll over on my back and clutch the book against my chest; then I chuck it on the carpet. It's too heavy to rest on me, too full of history. Not all of it is bad. Some of the memories make me smi...”

“I know youre in there, Mercedes, Faye says. I can see your dirty Converse shoes. You really should get a new pair.Did you see it? I croak. If you saw it, you probably saw a lot more of me. You prob...”

“Im so used to planning for guys, dressing and undressing for them and trying to morph myself into their dream girl. Im so used to it that I dont really know where that girl ends and the real me beg...”

“Zach wanting to see me next Wednesday is almost like Zach asking me on a date, if I were a regular girl wanting a regular relationship.But Im not a regular girl. I dont want to hold hands in the ha...”

“[All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving w...”

“We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, deba...”

“We left behind the other kids; their path-working, drinking, and being grown up- and rejected all that made them grumpy, uncreative and lifeless. We dumpstered, squatted, and shoplifted our lives b...”

“All I really wanted to do was cuddle back under the blankets, maybe with a certain stuffed toy penguin I knew. Yeah, hiding sounded good.”

“It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world”

“There are some things your mind has been hiding from you.”

“Whenever you don't know someone and you overhear their problems they always sound so trivial.”

“Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”

“There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough.”