Absorbing the fact that sometimes, people do cut you slack and forgive you and want you anyway. Sometimes they do. And when they do, even if it's not a happy ending, it is delicious

Frankie appreciated both the accolades and the rejections equally, because both meant she'd had an impact. She wasn't a person who needed to be liked so much as she was a person who liked to be notorious.

Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.

I can feel like a hag some days if I want! And I can tell everybody how insecure I am if I want! Or I can be pretty and pretend to think I'm a hag out of fake modesty-I can do that if I want, too. Because you, Livingston, are not the boss of me and what kind of girl I become.

I hate those endless descriptions of a heroine's physical attributes . . . it really bothers me how in books it seems like the only two choices are perfection or self-hatred. As if readers will only like a character who's ideal--or completely shattered.

You can't have an ending. It's impossible. Because unlike in the movies, life goes on. You're never at the end until you die.

although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did not confuse the golf course party with a good party, and she did not tell herself she had a pleasant time. it had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations. what frankie did that was unusual was to imagine herself in control. the drinks, the clothes, the instructions, the food (there had been none), the location, everything. she asked herself: if i were in charge, how could i have done it better?