I wanted her to to go on talking and understand without me saying anything. I wanted her to love me enough to leave him, to pack us up and take us away from him, to kill him if need be. (107)

I was born trash in a land where the people all believe themselves natural aristocrats.

my life has been saved over and over again by picking up a book in which someone captured the whole experience of being despised and not dying.

Behind the story I tell is the one I don't...Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear.

Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself.

When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.