“A normally constituted truth lives, let us say, as a rule seventeen or eighteen, or at most twenty years—seldom longer.”

“Halfway through April Naoko turned twenty. She was seven months older than I was, my own birthday being in November. There was something strange about Naoko's becoming twenty. I felt as if the only thing that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back and forth between eighteen and nineteen. After eighteen would come nineteen, and after nineteen, eighteen. Of course. But she turned twenty. And in the fall, I would do the same. Only the dead stay seventeen forever.”

“Admittedly, I am only seventeen now. But some years are longer than others.”

“The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen.”

“I was a normal eighteen-year-old: shuttered, self-conscious, untravelled and sneering; violently educated, socially crass, emotionally blurting.”

“He mentioned the connection between us. He identified with me. These are the things that many people want to hear, that most “normal” people want to be able to truthfully say, but almost no one can.”