“In every school I've gone to, all the athletic bastards stick together.”

“You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together.”

“Anyway GONE. My goal in writing GONE To creep you out. To make you stay up all night reading then roll into school tired the next day so that you totally blow the big test and end up dropping out of school. GONE. Imagine a world where every adult vanishes in an instant.”

“I've had so many bikini waxes, I cry every time I see a Popsicle stick.”

“And I've fallen.So hard.I've hit the ground. Gone right through it. Never in my life have I felt this. Nothing like this. I've felt shame and cowardice, weakness and strength. I've known terror and indifference, self-hate and general disgust. I've seen things that cannot be unseen.And yet I've known nothing like this terrible, horrible, paralyzing feeling. I feel crippled. Desperate and out of control. And it keeps getting worse. Every day I feel sick. Empty and somehow aching.Love is a heartless bastard.”

“Every athlete learns by theft and mimicry.”