“When you’re young, sex doesn’t mean as much, it isn’t sacred. Children make the best prostitutes because they’re th emost perfunctory about the whole encounter. The whole act is like a dare, like kissing a frog or something. It’s nasty while it’s happening, but you forget about it soon afterward. And sometimes it isn’t even that nasty. Whatever it is, it’s so far from love.”

“Love isn’t an act, it’s a whole life. It’s staying with [them] now because [they] need you; it’s knowing you... will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures—when all that’s on the shelf and done with.”

“Sex is . . . well, it’s so rude, isn’t it? You wouldn’t think girls would like sex. You’d think it’s too rude for them. Doing sex with a girl, it’s a bit like putting a frog down their backs or scaring them with dead mice or throwing worms at them. They’re such sensible, grown-up sorts of people. And yet apparently even the nice ones like you sticking the rudest thing you have on your whole body up the exact, rudest part of their body that they have. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me!”

“Those things don’t really matter. I mean, things like having no money and not having enough to eat. Even when you’re practically starving - it doesn’t change anything inside you. Oh well, it’s beastly while it’s happening, of course; but it doesn’t make any real difference; it’s the things that happen inside you that matter.’‘Meaning?’ said Mr. Warburton.‘Oh - things change in your mind. And then the whole world changes, because you look at it differently.”

“Sometimes, happiness feels so fragile…So what do we do about it?...Live. Forget that it’s fragile. Live like it isn’t”

“It’s weird how much people change...It’s kind of sad, if you think about it. Like there’s no continuity in people at all. Like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you’re no longer a kid but a “young adult,” and after that you’re a totally different person. Maybe even a less happy person. Maybe even a worse one.”