“still I think about him more than I don't. I'm I'm careful, I think about him all the time. What would it take to return to the ease of feeling safe and appreciated? The way I did with him. It would take, I decide, being 20. Better to think about my dead sister than a man whose kiss I will remember forever. Even if he vanishes as completely as Rebecca has.”

“What else is a poem about?The rhythm and the images buried in the language. All the ways you can build an emotion with words, but you can't just write 'I feel sad.' I mean, you can, but it's not poetry... I think it has to be experienced instead of studied. You step into it.”

“In all my life I've never felt as right and certain as when I'm with him.”

“The thing of it was that the girls in my class who date boys do hardly anything else. Girls who I used to think were just boring I now think stupid beyond belief. I call them A-Girls and it is not a compliment.”

“Are you going to marry her?"I would know such a thing as that," Clarence says, "only well after the fact.”

“Girls who kiss boys, girls who date them, girls who call them on the phone... that's all they do. There are other things I want to do.”

“And yet there's one question whose answer I have thought out, and it suddenly comes to mind . . . 'Stay with me.”