“She doesn't feel like crying anymore.”

“Or is that the nature of lust? It's like an urge that disregards all the stuff that your brain knows you actually think. I wonder if guys feel like this all the time. Or maybe if everyone feels like this all the time - everyone besides me - and that's why people act like such half-wits.”

“I love the idea of the big life - the life that matters, the life that makes a difference. The life where stuff happens, where people take action. The opposite of the life where the girl can't even speak to the boy she likes; the opposite of the life where the friends aren't even good friends, and lots of days are wasted away feeling bored and kind of okay, like nothing matters much.”

“People think of hearts when they think of love, but a heart is a bloody organ in the body. It doesn't have any emotions. It's like a metaphor for love that has nothing to do with what love actually is.”

“Frankie appreciated both the accolades and the rejections equally, because both meant she'd had an impact. She wasn't a person who needed to be liked so much as she was a person who liked to be notorious.”

“It didn't matter that in her heart Frankie knew she was smart and charming.What mattered was that feeling of being expendable. That to Porter, she was a nobody that could easily be replaced by a better model - and the better model wasn't even so great.Which meant Frankie herself was nearly worthless.”

“although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did not confuse the golf course party with a good party, and she did not tell herself she had a pleasant time. it had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations. what frankie did that was unusual was to imagine herself in control. the drinks, the clothes, the instructions, the food (there had been none), the location, everything. she asked herself: if i were in charge, how could i have done it better?”