“like a kid kicked out of class. humiliated and free.”

“I didn't tell her about the free-for-alls on the school yard, muggings on the bus. A girl burned a cigarette hole in the back of another girl's shirt at nutrition right in front of me looking at me as if daring me to stop her. I saw a boy being threatened with a knife on the hallway outside my spanish class. Girls talked about their abortions in gym class. Claire didn't need to know about that. I wanted the world to be beautiful for her. I wanted things to work out. I always had a great day no matter what.”

“at least if you were ignorant you could do wat you wanted. you had no idea wat had been acheived in the past. you were free instead of chewed at by bleeding impotence, dissolved away like a pearl in acid”

“We stared out at the city that hummed and glittered like a computer chip deep in some unknowable machine, holding its secret like a poker hand”

“Isn't it funny. I'm enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that's something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It's hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you.”

“The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me.”

“Death disapearance was what you didnt talk about. like a sewer running under the street, the shit was down there, out of sight, but you could smell it, it didnt go away, it didnt vanish”