“I'm a bit of a perfectionist, it turns out. Who knew?”

“It was weird because my first couple stories had been so easy. Now it was like, the more you did it, the harder it became. But in another way, it was addicting. It was like gambling, every time you'd start another one you'd think this time I'm going to get it right....”

“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.”

“On Friday night, my dad wants to have a family activity. so we go ice-skating. It's me and my mom and my dad and my sister. It's like we're all together. It's like a beautiful dream. It's like the Disney Channel. Except that my dad and I hate each other. And my mom hates herself. And my sister is humiliated by the bunch of us. And I'm secretly waiting for the inevitable devastation of our entire civilization. But except for that.”

“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.”

“I watch Stewart. He has the most interesting face. It is beautiful, young, almost childlike, and yet with a power and authority in his features. In another time he would have been a young warrior, a Lost Prince exiled from his kingdom. But he's from this time, this place, so he's just some "at risk" kid who can't find a place for himself in the straight world.”

“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.”