“There's nothing wrong with what you said in those letters. Nothing you should feel ashamed of. No matter what anyone else says, Jesse, I want you to know that.”

“Instead of killing herself, I wondered, could a person just shrink and crumple until she became nothing, until her traits and quirks wasted along with her body, until one day you realized that she had faded away?”

“I tell you if there's anything worse than dealing with a staunch woman... S-T-A-U-N-C-H. There's nothing worse, I'm telling you. They don't weaken, no matter what.”

“Besides, I hated him but I loved him too. Yes. I know all about that sort of thing. Christ, I should, I'd heard nothing else my last two years in New York. 'They have this terrific love-hate thing going,' everybody said about everybody else. 'You watch, it's going to destroy them-.' But never about me. When I took to someone I took to them, and when I took against them ditto. Mostly I felt indifference.”

“I remember a little later wondering why things always turn out to be diametrically opposed to what you expect them to be. It's no good even trying to predict what this opposite will be because it always fools you and turns out to be the opposite of that, if you see what I mean. If you think this is geometrically impossible all I can say is that you don't know my life”

“What does she think it feels like, having everybody telling you you're strange, you're different, you don't go along with the crowd, you don't play what we like to play, you don't think what we think, what's wrong with you? As if it never occurs to them that there might be something wrong with them. It feels like claws ripping you to pieces. And if you don't believe you can rise from the fire, then you'll just shrivel up and die inside”

“No matter what you do you've got to try to do it well. Otherwise, it's unbearable.”