“The girl traced the outline of her lover's shadow so she would always have a record of how he looked...”

“...the girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.”

“Here are the shadows left behind by a thousand moments, a thousand moods, of needs traced here on the wall by men who are gone. Here is the record of their being here.”

“Maybe the only thing each of us can see is our own shadow. Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations. The same way old painters would sit in a tiny dark room and trace the image of what stood outside a tiny window, in the bright sunlight. The camera obscura. Not the exact image, but everything reversed or upside down.”

“Amber saw getting infected as the ultimate commitment. Like her and the guy would be doomed to be with each other. Looking back, she figured a brush with death would make her really enjoy her life. Like she would feel more alive.”

“She's not wearing makeup so her face just looks like skin.”

“It's just such a big commitment," Brandy says, "being a girl, you know. Forever."Taking the hormones. For the rest of her life. The pills, the patches, the injections, for the rest of her life. And what if there wassomeone, just one person who would love her, who could make her life happy, just the way she was, without the hormones and make-up and the clothes and shoes and surgery? She has to at least look around the world a little.”