“She existed in her friends; there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.”

“Lena remembered herself in all the old familiar things they said. She existed in her friends; there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.”

“Because she was raw and uncertain, and she liked to keep all the messy parts of herself to herself. ... As much as Lena liked to hide the mess and display the finished product, by this point she was all mess and no product.”

“The phone was her worst enemy and her best friend but she never knew which until she answered it.”

“Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever.”

“She knew whose love she doubted. It wasn't her parents' and it wasn't her friends: It was her own. ”

“She went around with a broken heart, and she wasn't sure who'd broken it. She thought it was herself, mostly.”