“See, the thing about guys is that I didn't really care to be around them. I mean, guys really made me uncomfortable. I don't know why, not exactly. I just, I don't know, I just didn't belong. I think it embarrassed the hell out of me that I was a guy. And it really depressed me that there was the distinct possibility that I was going to grow up and be like one of those assholes.”

“Maybe you're just in love with being an outsider. You can join the human race any time you want to.""What makes you think I want to join? I live in the kind of world that looks at me like I'm some kind of freak. You know, when I told Dave I hadn't gone to college, he flinched. Just for a second. He was so surprised. I don't think he could believe a guy like me could be smart or articulate about anything-because I hadn't gone to college. Maybe it's better if people think you're stupid or slow. They don't expect anything. I live in a world that doesn't expect anything of me because it's already decided I don't matter.”

“See that tree?" It was a stubby cypress tree, all bent and twisted."Yeah, I see it.""It's my favorite tree.""It's not that great a tree," I said."That's it. That's exactly it. It's like me. The wind beat the holy crap out of it when it was just a sapling. Never could straighten itself out again." He sort of smiled at me. "But, Zach, it didn't die." He looked like maybe he wanted to cry. But he didn't. "It's alive.""Maybe it should have just given up.""That tree didn't know how to do that. It only knew how to live. Crooked. Bent. Taller trees dwarfing it even more. It just wanted to live. I named it, you know?"He was waiting for me to ask what he'd named it--but I decided I didn't want to ask."Zach," he whispered. "The tree's name is Zach."[p. 135]”

“Did the thought ever occur to you that I might care about you? People are allowed to care about each other." "You don't know me well enough to care about me." "Let me clue you in on something, Andres. Just because you hate yourself doesn't mean that I have to hate you.”

“A guy who loves his truck needs other people to admire his driving machine. Yeah, needs. That's the truth. I don't know why, but that's the way truck guys are.”

“I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn't have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. "Dante's my friend.”

“All my friends thought I was a very happy human being. Because that's how I acted- like a really happy human being. But all that pretending made me tired. If I acted the way I felt, then I doubt my friends would have really hung out with me. So the pretending wasn't all bad. The pretending made me less lonely. But in another was, it made me more lonely because I felt like a fraud. I've always felt like a fake human being.”