“They often got my file mixed up and thought that I had gone to juvenile detention for being a prostitute. All I had done was date a pimp.”

“The prostitutes worked for a pimp now. He was splendid and cruel. He was a god to them. He took their free will away from them, which was perfectly all right. They didn’t want it anyway. It was as though they had surrendered themselves to Jesus, for instance, so they could live unselfishly and trustingly—except that they had surrendered to a pimp instead.”

“The file clanked against me, my stupid idea nobody would have gotten had I ever done it. You even wouldn't have gotten it, Ed, I thought, watching her go. It's why we broke up, so here it is. Ed, how could you?”

“For years, I thought I had done that for Dewey. I thought that was my story to tell. And I had done that. When Dewey was hurt, cold, and crying, I was there. I held him. I made sure everything was all right.But that's only a sliver of the truth. The real truth is that for all those years, on the hard days, the good days, and all the unremembered days that make up the pages of the real book of our lives, Dewey was holding me.”

“I can't imagine pain greater than stepping across the veil and realizing I had not done what I came here to do - or realizing that I had given up my life to little or nothing, only then to find that it was gone. p 3”

“I didn't really know what to expect from detention but when I waked into the room, the first thought I had was, I don't belong in here with these future criminals.”