“I felt bad because Little Big Tom came in while we were making the tape and was like over the moon because he thought we were interested in his music. We had to humor him and listen to him deliver around six hundred speeches about fusion and the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Chicano and Latino influences on pretentious jazzy pseudorock. I think it was probably the happiest I'd ever seen him. And I also felt bad about the fact that after he left we kind of made fun of the funny way he said Latino, like he was the Frito Bandito or something. I felt bad, but I did it anyway, because I'm only human. I was ashamed of myself and depressed afterward, though, which is human, too, I guess. Being human is an excuse for just about everything, but it also kind of sucks in a way.”

“I'd heard about people falling in love, and I'd heard about lust. What I had never heard about was this all-consuming need to be inside another human being. I felt this desperate compulsion to become one with him. This was desire. This was to crave. This was what if felt like to want.”

“I loved Jack because of every little thing about him. The way he laughed, the way he made me smile, the way he'd stay up until nine in the morning watching zombie movies he'd seen a hundred times, and the way he could never hold a grudge. I loved him because I loved him, not because it was fate or destiny or in my blood, We had chosen each other, and that felt more powerful and more magical.”

“There's always a bit of suspense about the particular way in which a given school year will get off to a bad start.”

“He hadn't told me everything, but I'd left him for dead. I guess we were just about even.”

“I felt total bad about it, and empty. Granpa said he knew how I felt, for he was feeling the same way. But Granpa said everything you lost which you had loved give you that feeling. He said the only way round it was not to love anything, which was worse because you would feel empty all the time.”

“I'd accepted a while ago that there were too many reasons for me to even think about him romantically anymore. Every once in a while, I slipped a little and kind of wished he would too. It'd have been nice to know that he still wanted me, that I still drove him crazy. Studying him now, I realized he might not ever slip because I didn't drive him crazy anymore. It was a depressing thought.”