It’s got to be some kind of cult. Anyone offers you Kool-Aid or a hot shower, say no.

Just when you think you've hit rock bottom, you realize you're standing on another trapdoor.

Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last.

It was as if Hannah had sprung a leak and her character, usually so meticulous and contained, was spilling all over the place.

Always live your life with your biography in mind," Dad was fond of saying. "Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason, but at the very least you will be living grandly.

Sadly, American teenagers are to a weightless vacuum as seat cushions are to polyurethane foam -

But when you flee someone, no matter how far you roam, that person will follow you as doggedly as the stars.