“The man was bearing down on me. My hands were limp and wet. Please, I thought. Please. Who was I addressing? The man? God? Whoever handled these things.”

“. . . even the surprise of harmless others in the house disturbed me. I didn't want my inner rot on display, even accidentally. Living alone was frightening in that way. No one to police the spill ...”

“It pained me to imagine how our twosome appeared to others, marked as those kind of girls who belonged to each other. Those sexless fixtures of high school.”

“Money is ego, and people won't give it up. Just want to protect themselves, hold on to it like a blanket. They don't realize it keeps them slaves. It's sick" "What's funny is that as soon as you gi...”

“Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of live. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalo...”

“Adults always teased me about having boyfriends, but there was an age where it was no longer a joke, the idea that boys might actually want you.”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“It was nostalgic in that painful way nostalgia could be”

“We cannot escape the longing, no matter what life we choose. Were either longing for people, places or times gone by, which are essentially the same things: memories. And, whether or not we travel,...”

“What seems real one moment is fiction the nextand gone out of existence the moment after that.Nostalgia is the greatest enemy of truth,and change our only constancy.”

“It gave an appalling idea of the value of an hour, and I thought I could never waste one again without remorse and terror.”

“You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sin, you know, and cry tears doing it that are genuine as any.”

“If I could undo everything," Tony said, "I would never have gone to that party. I was an idiot, Kelly, and it cost me the love of my life.”