“Now I wonder all the time how you go back after something like that. Whether we can ever be friends again, or if what we had is broken into pieces. Not because of her, but because of me.”

“Whether we can ever be friends again, or if what we had is broken into pieces. Not because of her, but because of me.”

“That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way is winning.”

“Every time I read to her, it was like I was courting her, because sometimes, just sometimes, she would fall in love with me again, just like she had a long time ago. And that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. How many people are ever given that chance? To have someone you love fall in love with you over and over?”

“Is Lisa going to the prom?"I shelved my worries for the moment. "I don't know, Mom. We don't talk about the You-Know-What. We made a pact.""You could go together, if you didn't want to mess with dates and things.""I don't want to mess with the prom at all, Mom."She ignored me, placidly eating popcorn, piece by piece. "Some girls in my high school class did that and had a wonderful time. They weren't lesbians or anything. Not that it would matter if they were.""That's nice, Mom. I'm glad you're so open-minded." I grabbed my Coke and the popcorn bowl and headed for the stairs, because I could go my whole life without ever hearing my mother talk about lesbians again."Maybe you could take Justin to the prom," she called after me, laughter in her voice. "He is such a hottie."Shoot me now.”

“Our friends started life with too many beliefs -- the penalty of a Catholic upbringing. They were weighted down with beliefs, useless answers to non-questions. to work their way back to the fundamental ones -- what can we know? why is there anything at all? why not nothing? what may we hope? why are we here? what is it all about? -- they had to dismantle all that apparatus of superfluous belief and discard it piece by piece. But in matters of belief...it is nice question how far you can go in this process without throwing out something vital.”