“Rum and Coke, please," she told the bartender.Maybe that was why Liza and Bonnie never had guy trouble: great hair. She looked at Liza, racehorse-thin in purple zippered leather...Okay it wasn't just the hair. If she jammed herself into liza's dress, she'd look like Barney's slut cousin."Diet Coke," she told the bartender.”

“I had been wrong when I said Liza McCullen wasn't beautiful: when she smiled she was stunning.”

“That was what her parents did not understand—and had never understood—about stories. Liza told herself storied as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories.”

“Liza made a sudden decision. "I'll be your friend," she announced. she had trouble speaking the words but was glad once she had spoken them. She did not really want to be friends with an enormous rat of questionable sanity, but it seemed the right thing to say.”

“no more pep talks about believing in toads," Liza said."Don't they turn into princeses when you kiss them?" Bonnie said."Thats frogs," Liza Said. "Entirely different species.”

“She'd been a good nurse, and now she'd never be a nurse again. She was bitter about it and had turned herself into the slut bride from Planet X, as if even in human form, she wanted people to know what she was now: different, other. Trouble was, she looked like a thousand other teens and early twenties who also wanted to be different and stand out.”