Nate: “And,” he said, “boys at twelve aren’t exactly slick with the ladies.” Ruby: “’Slick with the ladies’?” I said. “Are you twelve?

Their words, like the music, had the potential to be endless.

There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can ever truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.

Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.

…You don’t want the best of times to be just one thing, forever. You have to have a lot of bests of times, each one topping the last. You know?

call it chicken salad

There were so many levels to the unknown, from safe to dangerous to outright nebulous, scariest of all.