“I've never before met anyone whose outside so matched their soul. You could drill clean through Didier and find nothing but layer upon layer of beauty, dark and strange and kind and prurient, but all of it perfectly, utterly pure.”

“It was as if you could see into the sky, through it's layers and into it's core. Layers of stars, translucent blanket upon blanket. The beauty was overwhelming. The wind blew her hair, and she willed herself to stop, to breathe, to feel.”

“These outward identities we build for ourselves are not all that we are. A person is made of so many layers. Skin is just the top layer. It's the part you can see, so when you walk into a room, others won't run into you. It's the brown-hair, brown-eyes layer; the you-look-good-in-green layer. Your outside is important because God made that part. He made you on purpose, uniquely beautiful. But you can't stop there, because that's your body, your skin, your outside. Dead people have all that stuff too.”

“Rosie had to keep her room neat enough so James would not freak out, but not so neat that they could figure it all out, break the code, of who you truly were, what you were up to, your values, your truest parts. ... you were layer upon layer of ideas and erasures and new ideas and soul and images. [p. 68]”

“You have so many layers, that you can peel away a few, and everyone's so shocked or impressed that you're baring your soul, while to you it's nothing, because you know you've twenty more layers to go.”

“I'm strong on the outside, not all the way through. I've never been perfect, but neither have you.”