“All right, he thought, okay; if thats the way it is; a savagery of anger in him now at the picture. They call them "pin-up girls" and think its cute how "our boys," now that they're drafted, love to hang them in their wall lockers. And then close up all the whorehouses, every place they can, so our young men will not be contaminated.”

“Maybe I'll just give up on boys. Okay, maybe not. I mean they're just so cute!”

“it wasn't uncommon... that such a girl might die young, but this girl had stayed alive long enough to make her mark, to take up residence in his imagination. to haunt him. now, through her, he mourns and celebrates everything that life has denied him, all the beauty, all the magic. this is how it happens: the dead go away into their solitude, but the young dead stay with us, they color our dreams, they make us wonder about ourselves, that we should be so unlucky, or clumsy, or so downright ordinary as to carry on without them.”

“...we've told men for so long that we're equal, we can open our own doors, carry our own bags, pay our own way, that now they're afraid to offer in case we accuse them of sex discrimination. If you were a man would you buy a woman underwear? I wouldn't dare. What if she throws it back in your face and calls you a sexist pig? So they've tried to turn into new men, but that's no good either, because now we're telling them to be masculine. We don't just want them in a pair of Marigolds cleaning the oven, that's not good enough. We want them to take control, to whisk us off hotels, buy us dinner, and make mad passionate love to us all night. We want it all ways. We want them heroes and handy with the vacuum. No wonder the poor guys are confused”

“I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it's all mixed up now.”

“If you call them a sin against nature again, I will end you." Ethan's hand was on his dagger's hilt. "Look who's a born-again Guardian evangelist now." Connor laughed. "What's up with that?" A blush slid up Ethan's neck. "Nothing. They're our allies. That's all." "Sure it is." Conner said.”