People said things they didn't mean all the time. Everybody else in the world seemed able to factor it in. But not Lena. Why did she believe the things people said? Why did she cling to them so literally? Why did she think she knew people when she clearly didn't? Why did she imagine that the world didn't change, when it did? Maybe she didn't change. She believed what people said and she stayed the same." (Lena, 211)

It’s more that I’m afraid of time. And not having enough of it. Time to figure out who I’m supposed to be… to find my place in the world before I have to leave it. I’m afraid of what I’ll miss.

She was supposed to be putting her life together right now, and all she could seem to do was throw grenades at it.

The path of your life can change in an instant.

People left a lot of things behind when they went in the water. Their clothes, their stuff, their makeup, their fixed-up hair, their voices, their hearing, their sight—at least as the normally experienced them.

He just wanted to look at her and know her life was marching along under the same arch of time and space as he is.

Shy” was the sympathetic interpretation she got from older people. “Snotty” was the interpretation she got from people her own age.