“How do I like to write? withe a soft pencil and a hard dick, not the other way round.I like the paper of all kinds : creamy, white, yellow, thick, thin, lined, plain. In my cupboard I have at least fifty notebooks, each of which, at the time of purchase, filled me with excitement of what might be said of new thoughts discovered.....and then-nothing.”

“My friends scoffed at my anxiety and said dumb things like, 'Fifty is the new forty!' Which just made me realize that there are a whole lot of other people who suck at math as bad as I do. No. Fifty is fifty.”

“He said he didn’t like my kind and I was filled with the delirious expectation that he would identify me as a common species - that there were others like myself. I controlled my excitement, but he seemed to sense it - his gaze wavered uncertainly.”

“The point is that something I thought was perfect has been broken, and I'm having to find the beauty in what is there instead of what I thought was there. Like this shell. I can either spend all my time wishing it were perfect, trying to imagine it the way it was or might have been, or I can see how beautiful it is just like this. ”

“Homework, I have discovered, involves a sharp pencil and thick books and long sighs.”

“I poked at the white paper bag. There was nothing left inside. Just like me: a clean crisp outside and nothing at all on the inside.”