When you are a high school girl, there is nothing more miraculous than a high school boy.

I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will--that is the part that's almost unbearable.

I feel that Pride and Prejudice is an incredibly well constructed novel on every level. The dialogue is great. The character development is great. The plotting is great. The pacing is great. The language is great.

She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it.

I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.

After I’d told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, ‘Did he kiss you?’ ‘John and Martin totally would have seen that,’ I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.

But I never thought of who he wasn't, I never had to explain or defend him to myself, I didn't even care what we talked about.