“Be real, because a mask only fools people on the outside. Pretending to be someone you're not takes a toll on the real you, and the real you is more important than anyone else.”

“You know the real me," she said, stopping to peer up at him. "More than anyone else.”

“Why do you pretend, when you can make it real? We like pretending to be someone else but the truth we just want to be ourselves.”

“Real, she imagined later on, was something else; it had nothing to do with things you could touch. Real was being seen, noticed, acknowledged, and later remembered. Real was people thinking about you when you weren't in the room. If others thought about you, then you must be more than a made-up dream. You need other people to be real, she decided. Otherwise you might just be a speck, an atom, inventing an elaborate story. It seemed like a paradox, but it must be so. She knew other people were real by thinking about them. Her thinking of her parents and her brothers, her school friends, were proof that they were real. They were both outside and in her head. But how could she be sure she was in anyone's head?”

“some soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.”

“Only a real asshole takes liberties with someone else's car stereo. That's serious.”