“Let me meet Poet, too, but mainly Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers. A guy who paints things like that is a guy I could fall for. Really fall for”

“Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.”

“Rembrandt painted portraits, The Karate Kid painted fences, and I paint my toenails. But I’m not a snob, I still consider those other two guys to be artists.
”

“Open skies painted above painted doorways and painted birds skimming across bricks trying to fly away. Little bird, what are you thinking? You come from a can.”

“But I’m practically a guy. I mean, except for these fucking hormones that make me want to jump Ty and Justin Timberlake. I don’t obsess over things that other girls care about, like clothes, movie stars, hair, painting nails, knitting, or whatever shit they’re into.”

“There are guys who grow up thinking they'll settle down some distant time in the future, and there are guys who are ready for marriage as soon as they meet the right person. The former bore me, mainly because they're pathetic; and the latter, frankly are hard to find.”