I'm afraid that whatever I touch is spoilt by the contact." "I'm not scared of being spoiled," Val said.

Clever girl. You play with fire because you want to be burnt.

I thought of how proud he was when he took the marks- cutting the skin of his throat in a long slash and then packing it with ashes until keloid scars rose up. He called it his second smile.

A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings.

More and more I feel like the boy who cut off his nose to spite his face.

The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don’t deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they’re going to go home one night and have the girl they’ve loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something’s too good to be true, that’s because it’s a con.

We have about three hours of homework a night, and our evening study period is only two hours, so if you want to spend the break at half-past-nine not freaking out, you have to cram. I'm not sure that the picture of the wide-eyed zombie girl biting out the brains of senior douchebag James Page is part of Sam's homework, bit if it is, his physics teacher is awesome.