“I'd always liked her in a way I never had to think about, like the fact of my own hands.”

“We had been with the men, we had let them do what they wanted. But they would never know the parts of ourselves that we hid from them - they would never sense the lack or even know there was someth...”

“How sad it was to realize that sometimes you never got there. That sometimes you lived a whole life skittering across the surface as the years passed, unblessed.”

“The hatred that vibrated beneath the surface of my girl's face-- I think Suzanne recognized it. Of course my hand would anticipate the weight of a knife. The particular give of a human body. There ...”

“I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. Feelings seemed completely unreliable, like faulty gibberish scraped from a Ouija board.”

“But I could not fully admit it, even then. The way Suzanne's face looked as she watched him - I wanted to be with her. I thought that loving someone acted as a kind of protective measure, like they...”

“Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years.”

“Someone's boyfriend died in a rock-climbing accident in Switzerland: everyone gathered around her, on fire with tragedy. Their dramatic shows up support underpinned with jealousy- bad luck was rare...”

“She may not be the prettiest, or the smartest, or the wealthiest at the Academy, but she could be kind. Anyone could be kind.”

“It took me years to figure out that upset was upset, and tumultuousness was not the same thing as passion. Love isn't drama.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. Its okay if you have to leave us. Its okay if you want to stop fighting.”

“I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her e...”

“Cut the ending. Revise the script. The man of her dreams is a girl.”

“Girls get screwed.Not that kind of screwed, what I mean is, they're always on the short end of things.The way things work, how guys feel great, but make girls feelcheap for doingexactly what they b...”

“Try patting them on the back or shoulder and telling them everything is going to be fine. Lots of times when girls cry, they don't want you to fix the problem, they just want to be consoled.”