“Of all the forms in which ideas are disseminated, the college professor lecturing his class is the slowest and the most expensive. You don't have to go to college to learn about the great ideas of Western man. If you want to learn about Milton, or Camus, or even Margaret Mead, you can find them. In paperback. In the library.”

“It's about picking which baggage is worth carrying with you later, when you go into the real world, where people don't want to hear about body parts on the roads.”

“I find it hard to hate a man who brings you exactly what you didn't even know you craved.”

“I'm 38 and I'm single and I'm having my most intense and gratifying relationship with a dog. But we all learn about love in different ways, and this way happens to be mine.”

“He felt blind and deaf, the way he did when he was close to a good idea but couldn't tap into it. He'd told Lizzie about that feeling once, and Lizzie had said, "That just means you aren't very smart, Reeve. Smart people have good ideas without having to be blind and deaf first.”

“Her laugh was a travesty. Which made sense because in a way, so was his apology. But what was he supposed to say?I want you until I hurt. Until I sweat. I love you with a raw, bleeding need that I've never understood.And all I know for sure is that you can never be mine.”

“The real struggle is about you: you, a person who has to learn to live in the real world, to inhabit her own skin, to know her own heart, to stop waiting for life to begin.”