Sex scenes in books are always like first person, from this male perspective and just about how awesome he is. It feels like such a fantasy.

After school the very next day, El Rey's mobile home was gone. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night.

Our worlds are so momentary. We are along all our lives and then go off that way as well.

The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are.

What I've learned is that there is nothing in this life that does not fail to disappoint us, even our own deaths.

When she cries, it is quiet, tearless, almost completely imperceptible: one more unheard prayer.

It is what we see when we imagine what the afterlife must be like: our happiest triumphs, our most sincere moments, stolen from the seam of our lives, a respite just before the onset of imminent tragedy.