“I think I’m going to cut down on my dating,’ Annie said. ‘I used to need a lot of attention. You know, to make up for that empty feeling inside. But boys aren’t always the answer.”

“She used to write all the time,' Elizabeth explained, 'before she lost all that weight. Remember? When she was the butt of everyone’s jokes instead of the girl all the boys want to date?”

“Imagine a world full of Elizabeth Wakefields,' Lila said. 'Could you imagine a duller, more predictable place? I think I’d go crazy.”

“How inappropriate,’ Lila said coldly. ‘Who’d ever dream of showing up at a dance in a wheelchair? What does she think she’s going to do all night?”

“When I first heard the word existential, I didn't know what it meant. But then I found out that no one knows what it means, so now I use it all the time.”

“In Bruce’s opinion, the only fun in dating was the sport of it. The more it was like a tennis match, where he had to wear down his opponent through expertise and sheer force of will, the better he liked it.”

“Another funny thing about having friends was that they expected things of you. they made you want to not be a terrible, awful, execrable person. They made you feel worse when you were one. It was a lot easier not to have any friends.”