You don't have time, Len. That is the most bitter and the most beautiful pieve of advice I can offer. If you don't have what you want now, you don't have what you want. -pg276

Besides being asked why I write about young characters, I am often asked how I write about young characters. How do I throw myself across the chasm of full adulthood to relive that period? I guess I don’t, really. Age is not so much a feature of your character, as the spot where you stand for a pretty fleeting time on the arc of your life.

Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.

She thought she was independent and strong, but she got one small taste of love and she was hungrier than anyone. She was ravenous.

How sad it was, Carmen thought, that you acted awful when you were desperately sad and hurt and wanted to be loved. How tragic then, the way everyone avoided you and tiptoed around you when you really needed them. Carmen knew this vicious predicament as well as anyone in the world. How bitter it felt when you acted badly to everyone and ended up hating yourself the most.

He'd pushed her. He'd scared her. He'd besieged her. He'd vowed he wouldn't, and he did.

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.