“I was getting an A for work. But not for talent. The story of my life.”

“I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.”

“How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?”

“Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.”

“Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.”

“I think you love him more than you can bear.”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”