She kept walking. The very small, brave part of her brain knew that this would be her one chance. If she turned around, she would lose it.

It took the real thing to show you the size of your delusions.

Love made you admire funny things about a person, like how good she was at remembering to return her library books and at slicing cucumbers very thin. She was a veritable wonder at pulling a splinter out of her foot.

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.

And I thought about the color and I realized what blue it was. It was the soft and changeable, essential blue of a well-worn pair of pants. Pants = Love

As much as I'm drawn to writing about teenage girls, I like the idea of having the freedom to branch out and write about different ages, for different ages.

Marnie hated to see her spend so much of herself on someone who didn't care.