I like having a private name and a public name. It helps keep things straight.

... Hey, I didn't know you didn't like baloney." I went cold. "I don't like it. I never liked it." Soda just looked at me. "You used to eat it. That's why you wouldn't eat anything while you were sick. You kept saying you didn't like baloney, no matter what it was we were trying to get you to eat." "I don't like it," I repeated.

California is like a beautiful wild kid on heroin, high as a kite and thinking she's on top of the world, not knowing she's dying, not believing it even if you show her the marks.

I go straight from thinking about my narrator to being him.

I'm a good judge of my own work.

I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid everything's new, dawn. It's just when you get used to everything that it's day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That's gold. Keep that way, it's a good way to be.

They shouldn't hate each other . . . I don't hate the Socs any more . . . they shouldn't hate . . .