“If I'd been ten years old again I'd have stuck my tongue out at Caroline. At sixteen, I ought to be above such behavior.I wasn't.”

“I'd have given anything to turn back the last ten years of my life - and that wasn't something someone my age should have to feel.”

“I'd been beaten before; I'd been humiliated; I'd been spit on and ostracized...all the things you should not have to know about when you are on the cusp of sixteen, but do because you're different.”

“He isn't mine to miss,' I say a minute later, after I control the quiver I know would have crept into my voice if I'd responded right away.'No one belongs to anyone, Clem. Especially not when you're sixteen years old.”

“When I was ten years old, I realized I'd been kidnapped as a toddler. Of course, I would have to have been a fairly dim child to miss the clues. Great big pink-elephant clues, trumpeting and lumbering and shitting through the house, ignored by everyone except me.”

“I'd convinced myself it would have been different if he'd been as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside, but he wasn't. He was cruel beauty, a sculpture, a god, and I couldn't tear my eyes from him. I'd seen his expression soften in the dungeon with the whip. I'd do anything to have him look at me like that again, no matter how insane he was.”