“As the dog sprinted back, Jack said to the girl, "Sweetheart,honey, why do you have to be so hateful?""Why not?" Ellie said. "It's not like being good ever got me anywhere.”

“Why can't you like me?" he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and electric roil of those cold, black shadows. "Why can't you like me just a little?"She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance.Instead, he kissed her.”

“She's got the kind of ethereal, unselfconscious beauty some young girls possess that breaks your heart. Or theirs.”

“What about study hall? Shouldn't I go to the library? "What for, Ms. Lord?" Mr. anderson said. "You're with me”

“It was that stages-of-anger thing. I was shocked and then I got pissed and then I fought like hell … and then I went numb. They called it acceptance, but it wasn’t. It’s what happens when you have only two choices: live with the monster, or kill yourself.”

“My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work.”

“They call it the drowning instinct. It's when drowning doesn't look like drowning.”