Jennifer Echols

“He nodded to my fiddle case. "Why didn't you come play with me?" Immediately he rolled his eyes at himself. "That's not what I meant."I didn't point out that if he was constantly hearing double entendres in his own words, he had a dirtier mind than he wanted to let on. Sam having a dirty mind was okay with me. It was adorable, actually, as long as his mind was on me.”

“Anybody who knows him, even all the girls, will tell you he's a great guy, and they'll do anything for him, right up until they want to kill him.”

“When every other facet of my life was a mess, music stayed true as math.”

“It's one thing to think you're worthless, and quite another for somebody else to tell you that you are.”

“I had cancer, you fuck!”

“I brushed some imaginary lint from my shirt, or touched my cleavage to catch his eye, depending on your perspective.”

“What do you write in those forms?” I asked.“Nothing. I just do this to look threatening.”

“Maybe my ploy had worked. I wore a respectable shirt that buttoned down the front, only - whoops! – I must have forgotten to fasten the button over my cleavage. No respectable girl would wear her shirt open that low. (Cough.)”

“Do you watch Cops on TV?”“I love Cops,” he said. “It’s like my life, but with the boring parts taken out.”

“His voice was soft and jis smile was kind”

“But, Erin. If you are trying to make a writing career for yourself, you will get rejected again and again and again. You must keep going. You must learn not to take no for an answer.”

“Oh.” My dad actually looked sheepish. “It’s one o’clock in the morning and I was going to tell you to shut the monkey up and go to bed. I didn’t realise what was going on in here.”“What’s going on in here?” Cameron asked suspiciously.“Maturity.” My dad backed out of the room and closed the door.”

“I had shaved my beard for her-a huge disappointment, because I’d enjoyed my three weeks looking like a bank robber.”

“But first I had to get through the ironing. It took a lot of patience. I had none. It took forever, and then I had to press the whole shirt again to get out the creases I’d pressed into it.”

“This was about to go very bad, because Adam was going to cry. “I miss you,” he said, and his voice broke.”

“Who’s driving the boat?”Over the motor, I heard girls screaming at us the instant before we crashed.”

“I wanted to remind you that you do not allow me to deliver boats, as I have been known to crash them.”

“It’s easier to remember your lies if they’re close to the truth,”

“Love isn’t something you have to deserve.”

“Men always do that to women when they feel threatened. They tell everybody the woman must be giving out blow jobs because there’s no way she could be successful otherwise.”

“Sarcasm was a weapon for children.”

“When something awful happens, sometimes people get stuck.”

“I remembered what Mr. Hall had told me when I first asked him for a lesson: the kids who watch planes are destined to be pilots.”

“It was better that we never apologized to each other. Then we’d be admitting that we were wrong and we owed each other something. That’s where people got into trouble.”

“You’re not a whore. You’re a chick who hasn’t exactly grown up with every advantage, and you’ve learned to use what you’ve got. You don’t do it on purpose. It’s second nature. You act girly and helpless and make men think you’re harmless.”

“But when I was a little girl, my mom always told me to be nice to everybody, no matter what they looked like or how they treated me, because I never knew who might be an angel God had sent to Earth in disguise.”

“I guess’ will get you killed.”

“If I were stepping down from the bus at the rich end of town instead of the trailer park, I wouldn’t have to watch every word I said to make sure it wasn’t slang for an orgasm.”

“Can you put your hands on my crotch?”“Why, hell no, I cannot.” I didn’t remember anything like this happening in Pride and Prejudice.”

“He grinned at me and whispered, “I’m going to kiss you now. It’ll be a big one, so don’t hit me.”

“It’s not really wine,” he said. “It’s Diet Coke. And if anyone ever serves you brown wine with a foamy head, send it back.”

“Boys don’t gossip.”“Pah! You don’t know us as well as you think.”This was a disturbing prospect.”

“You are the prettiest pilot I ever saw.''Hey.' Grayson walked forward. 'Do you see me standing here in a tux? Get in line.”

“When I’m with you," he began again, "it’s like… I still don’t feel normal. But I can see normal at twelve o’clock on the horizon." He pointed past me, through the windshield of an imaginary airplane. "At least I know normal is still out there. I’ve spent the last three months not sure of that at all.”

“Grayson looked at me again. This time his gaze traveled form my hair down, and he let me see that he was looking. What he meant by this was that he thought I was beautiful, it was not just my miraculous hair, and we shouldn’t be distracted from our true love by the pesky detail that he was blackmailing me into dating his brother.Right.”

“I squeezed the controls to brace myself so I wouldn’t shiver with the chill of wanting. Normal people got that feeling when they quit smoking cigarettes. I had gotten it then too.Normal people did not get that feeling when faced with danger.”

“And" – his voice was soft now – "you’re a beautiful girl. If you show the slightest interest in Alec, he’ll want to go out with you. I know I would."My skin prickled with goose bumps, a chill in the hot April evening. My brain knew Grayson didn’t have the crush on me that I’d imagined when he got mad at me at the airport that afternoon. He wouldn’t have asked me to date his brother if he’d been interested in me. But my body didn’t know this, or didn’t care.”

“I had wanted something from him. Even expected a confrontation. To be ignored was a sentence without a period.”

“He tilted his head to one side, considering me, his weathered face impossible to read. But his voice was kind as he said, "There are lots of mistakes you can make. Pilots make them, and pilots die. Obstacles will kill you. The weather will kill you. But, as I’m about to show you, the airplane is your friend. The plane wants to fly.”

“Most people hear an airplane in the sky and think, ‘There’s an airplane,’ and go back to what they were doing. A few folks look around for the airplane, try to figure out what kind of plane it is, and watch it from the time they spot it to the time it disappears on the horizon, maybe after that. Those kids are the ones who will be pilots." He pointed at me. "I knew that about you. I’ve just been waiting for you to show up.”

“The TV said you should ignore bullies and they would stop harassing you. In practice this worked about half the time. The other half, you ended up with two tall boys shadowing you through a trailer park, their fingers taking little nips at your clothes, like dogs.”

“We wanted to enjoy the afterglow and we were trying our best to bond, but it was difficult with so many people between us, even though most of them were ghosts.”

“On a sigh he brought up his hand and used one long finger to brush a dark curl away from my face. With the saddest look in his eyes, he said, "A girl needs to be held right now, and comforted, and told that everything is going to be okay. I'm sorry I can't do that for you. I don't have any of that left." "I have a little," I said, "and I'll lend it to you.”

“Art is the most effective form of communication.”

“Boys are two years behind girls in maturity level.”

“We’re not talking about your life. We’re talking about your writing. Your imagination. Your creativity. And it’s time you learned there’s a big difference between your writing and your life. To do it right, your writing takes an incredible amount of work. Your life takes more.”

“Your love for me was a symptom that your brain hadn’t developed.”

“He managed to find his way into my heart again and sabotage it from the inside.”

“He loves her so much that he can’t even see her.”

“Yes, I was good at reading people. I studied them so I could put them in my novels.”