She must have sensed she never really had him. That was a sadness of hers, he knew.

Why does he have to be my boyfriend? Are you inferior if you don't have a boyfriend? Why does everybody have to be in love with somebody?

It was probably good you couldn't flip the love switch because sometimes it was what you needed even if you didn't want it.

Luck never gives; it lends.

She realized all at once the deeper thing that bothered her, the thing that made him not just irritating but intolerable: how he kept loving her blindly when she deserved it so little.

Particularly beautiful people were like particularly funny-looking people, though. Once you know them you mostly forgot about it.

Tibby sat on the outside of a group of kids in the film program. There was a lot of dark clothing and heavy footwear, and quite a few piercings glinting in sunlight. They had invited her to sit with them while they all finished up their lunches before film seminar. Tibby knew that they had invited her largely because she had a ring in her nose. This bugged her almost as much as when people excluded her because she had a ring in her nose.