She had a body that even I coveted in a strictly Platonic sense.

To my embarrassment, I was crying again. Real girl tears for the second time, these ones born out of frustration. That didn't happen to me very often, but I hated it when it did. It was faulty wiring in the female body, tear ducts attached directly to the frustration meter. Trying to explain to men that no, I wasn't being manipulative, I just couldn't stop my eyes from leaking salt water, only added to the aggravation.

I'm not a goddamned faith healer! I don't talk to God! I'm a mechanic and her goddamned engine was broken! --Joanne

One forgets the fear of heights when one cannot fall

Nobody who loved life and new experiences that much was ever going to get old, not really. Wiser and eventually dead, maybe, but not old.

Don’t be sorry. Be good. Be right. Be a hero.

They're constants, aren't they?" ... "Books are. That's why we like them so much. They seem immutable. They're not, of course. Not from the author's first draft to the tenth printing, but they seem like it.