“Ever since college, I make friends. They get married. I lose friends.”

“Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.”

“The friends you make in college are friends you'll have for life, even if you don't talk for years at a time.”

“I think about my choice. Either outcome is bleak. If I stay and live through high school, go to college, get a job, what will ever change? This blackness inside will never go away. I don't make friends; I'll always be alone. If I go, at least there's hope of peace. Chance of a new and better life on the other side.”

“I don’t think of myself as a writer. I’m troubled and stupid like everyone else. I grew up with the streets. I have dead friends, friends in prison, friends who are prostitutes, on drugs, drunk, married to shitty men. I write because I need to write, to make sense of life. Honesty is everything to me.”

“I want to marry Mommy. We'll kiss and we'll marry and I'll take her on dates and we'll be best friends forever and make lots of phone calls with each other.”