“We all start out thinking that there is such a thing as perfection and that there's something wrong with us if we settle for less. First we won't eat the food with the brown spots. Then we hate ourselves because we have our own brown spots—pimples or ears that are too big or legs that are too skinny.”

“Another thing I think about names is that they DO hurt. They hurt because we believe them. We think they are telling us something true about ourselves, something other people can see even if we don't. —Bobby Goodspeed”

“Some days I want to put my head in the sand. There's too much pain out there, there's too much that scares me. But I wouldn't be able to breathe with my head in the sand, and I wouldn't be able to hear or see or smell. The world is a lovely place...despite the sadness it holds for each of us, despite the terrible things we do.”

“Sometimes kids just act impulsively, but it's because we have strong feelings, not because we're trying to make trouble.”

“(Quoting Goethe:)"We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.”

“We have often had this particular exchange about climate and landscape and why we both feel so lonely here uprooted. It was what each of us had wanted of course.Besides wanting to experience a place we hated, we wanted to be insomniacs and loners, losers and drop-outs. To know the sky was the only location of meaning and joy left to us.”

“Dear Skeezie, Today I ran after a boy as he was trying to get away. I tackled him and we both landed in the mud. Do you think I appeared desperate?-Joe Bunch”