“I love getting older," I muse as I carefully begin to peel the layers away. "You're closer to death, but there are presents.”

“He says I'm a regular onion! I keep him busy peeling away the layers.”

“Down on my knees / I peel back the layers of the world.”

“People are supposed to accumulate, I thought, as they get older, but I seem to be sloughing off, like a person wrapped in a hundred layers of cellophane, tearing one layer off at a time, trying to get down to me.”

“I didn't care that we'd caught a few stares from students passing by. I didn't care that the bell to begin class rang. I didn't care that everything between us had changed. All I cared about was the fact that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get any closer to Jack.”

“Then she compared the work we did to the peeling of an onion: "It takes a long time, and we peel the layers slowly, incrementally, transparent layers, around and around, peeling until we get to the core," then she smiled, "and there are always tears." (141)”