“Just because the bully was always nice to you, never stole your lunch money, didn’t make him any less of a bully, did it?”

“Never negotiate with terrorists, make bargains with mobsters, or drive downtown on game day. Some things are just a given.”

“Every conversation they had anymore it felt like instead of unraveling the mystery, it just further entangled all of them into a twisted never-ending knot.”

“It was a sickening, humbling, maddeningly powerless sensation this watching them and waiting for them to come to him. For the time they could be a family again. But Mickey did it like one’s tongue pointlessly finds a mouth sore over and over again, half to see if it was still there, half to see if it still hurt.”

“No, nothing much had changed in the old neighborhood. She was still just an actress in someone else’s play.”

“Skate, you’re about to pop the best wheelie of your life.”

“She wished with one part of her soul this weren’t real and with the other that it was, but wasn’t it just another goodbye either way?”