“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....”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”

“It's so weird being straight. You have no defenses. Shit happens and you have to feel it. You have no choice.”

“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.”