“Ed felt faint. Milk shake, as it turned out, was much less handy in your veins then, say, oxygen.”

“Jessica felt like a heroine in a tragic, dramatic love story. She lifted her chin and turned away. It was all over.”

“He saw her right after the seventh-period bell rang. She seemed dressed for the sole purpose of blending in with the lockers, but she stood out, anyway. It didn’t matter that her wide blue eyes were narrowed or that her pretty mouth was twisted into a near snarl — she was blatantly beautiful. It was kind of sick the way Ed was preoccupied with beautiful girls these days.He felt a little sorry for her. (He was also preoccupied with finding ways of feeling sorry for people.) She was new and trying hard not to look it. She was confused and trying to look tough. It was endearing is what it was.”

“She imagined herself whirling breathlessly beneath the flashing lights of some impossibly chic Manhattan disco. Suddenly, a hand touches her arm. She turns. ‘Pardon me,’ Mick Jagger says, 'I believe this next dance is mine.”

“As the crow flies. That’s how she liked to walk. So what if she had nowhere to go? So what if no one on earth knew or probably cared where she was or when she’d get home? That wasn’t the point. It didn’t mean she had to take the long way. She was starting a new school in the morning, and she meant to put as much distance between herself and tomorrow as she could. Walking fast didn’t stop the earth’s slow roll, but sometimes it felt like it could.”

“Elizabeth remembered how foolish everyone had felt when they discovered Mr. Mercandy was the victim of a stroke and not a zombie as they’d thought.”

“Losers with no imagination say that if you start a new school, there has to be a first day. How come they haven't figure out how to be that? Just think existentially. All you do is take what is supposed to be the first day and bury someplace in the next month. By the time you get around to it a month later, who cares?”