“He'd been given an assignment to write about teen beauty pageants [...], which he'd accepted because he enjoyed blood sports as much as the next person.”

“He'd given up blessings he hadn't been worthy of for the chance to be with her, and now he'd lost that, too.”

“Chase was gone then, and Donnie was back, alone in his room, wondering about those pictures from an art book he'd so admired. Because it felt like he'd just lived one, and it had been beautiful, so beautiful, and he'd been able to reach out and touch the lines of it, but it still hurt.”

“But he'd never been in love. He knew that was what he was really asking himself. He'd never given himself to someone else completely. He'd always held something back, even if he hadn't known that he was doing it. He'd reserved the deepest part of him, the part that truly was him, because he'd feared that once he gave it away he would never get it back.”

“He'd done as he'd pleased and even had often enjoyed long runs of luck where he hadn't been caught. But the luckiest moment of his life had been being caught.”

“i could never be a sports writer, unless my assignment was to write 'sports sports sports sports sports' for three pages”