“But I think Cybil was my biggest fan. She cut out my articles and hung them in her locker and we were always cracking up how if you wrote the simplest, most obvious thing in the world people thought you were a genius.”

“It's hard to imagine talking to Lucy. But I can imagine sleeping with her. I have been imagining it quite regularly. I can't stop imagining it. Maybe it's time for my first Lucy Branch, my first truly physical relationship. And why do I assume it would be a bad thing? Maybe it's better with someone different from you. I could teach her how fluorocarbons affect the ozone. She could teach me about oral sex.We would both become better people.”

“I said I looked like a dork and she said that was true, but there was something classic about my dorkiness. I was so open and my awkwardness and embarrassment were so clear and understandable. I was extremely watchable.”

“Do you ever think about the ocean?" Nick asked me."What about it?" I said."Like what could live down there? Like how there's as much life down there as up here? Maybe more?""God Lives Underwater," said someone. "That's the name of a band. They're awesome.""But seriously," Nick said, "it's like an alternate universe. Right here on our own planet.""Right here, a hundred feet from us," said Sheila."Right here in my hair," said one of the girls who had swum, pulling some sea gunk out of her wet hair.Everyone laughed quietly at that. Nick drank his beer. The wood crackled as it burned. We all stared at the black ocean.”

“He holds me. I am his in a way he probably isn't even aware of. Boys shouldn't know what power they have. They would panic probably or just mess things up. But boys are who you give yourself to. Not your parents or your teachers or your "future". You give yourself to a boy. And then you go for long walks at night and think about them and wonder what they will do to you in the end.”

“I like if you're reading something, and they're saying something you always thought, but they're putting it in the exact right way”

“You need other people, Madeline. There's a great freedom in knowing that. And accepting that. And letting people in. Letting them help you.”