When she is happy, she can't stop talking, when she is sad she doesn't say a word.

She wondered if maybe tragedy was what it took to make your heart capable of admitting a new member.

Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it.

I allowed myself to suffer how jarringly destructive the present feels and how fragile the past.

You are not going to die, I know I said I'd let you, but I can't.

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.

It wasn't just that Lucy wanted to help him. She wasn't as selfless as that. She was madly attracted to him. She was attracted to all of the normal things and the weird things, too, like the back of his neck and his thumbs on the edge of his desk and the way his hair stuck out on one side like a little wing over his ear. She caught his smell once, and it made her dizzy. She couldn't fall asleep that night.