“I could imagine myself becoming one of Marla's stories.”

“Cancer will be like that, I tell Marla. There will be mistakes, and maybe the point is not to forget the rest of yourself if one little part might go bad.”

“Marla doesn't have testicular cancer. Marla doesn't have tuberculosis. She isn't dying. Okay in that brain brain-food philosophy way, we're all dying, but Marla isn't dying the way Chloe was dying.”

“If she was going to die, Marla didn't want to know about it.”

“When you’re twenty-four,” Marla says, “you have no idea how far you can really fall, but I was a fast learner.”

“Why is it that I occur as a story to everyone except myself?”

“Why should I believe any of this?' It happens that fast. I say, because I think I like you. Marla says, 'Not love?'This is a cheesy enough moment, I say. Don't push it.”