“*marissa tries to get her single, working mother's attention by suggesting something outrageous, to which mom replies:*'You're a smart girl. Use your head and avoid any guy who reminds you of your father.”

“Marissa Rogers, I will marry you tomorrow if that's what it takes to show you that I'm committed. you say the word and we will go to city hall at nine a.m. and tie the knot with a couple of bums looking on.”

“Think about what you want out of the situation, not how you feel about it.”

“Trust me, it's the weight of someone else's expectation that's the hardest to lose.”

“She'd spent years trying to explain herself to me (and I to her), but in the end, it had all been for nothing. I could recite her memories, but I could not feel them. She was another country, and I would never travel there.”

“How can you humans actually believe yourselves superior to any truly sentient being? Look at you - self-styled demigods, mired in your own filthy social excrement, possessed of vomitous morals. You kill each other with unnatural impunity, preying upon the weal and helpless... not from necessity, but for gain. Name one other species that maims and destroys to gain glittering trinkets that will not fill one's belly.”

“Straight men who visit prostitutes are valiantly striving to keep sex free from emotion, duty, family--in other words, from society, religion, and procreative Mother Nature.”