“A two-year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.”

“You can't tell a seventeen-year-old anything. They think they're immortal. They don't listen. Seventeen-year-olds have to see it for themselves.”

“You have two kinds of secrets. The ones only you know. The ones only you don't.”

“Lola writes in her notebook: Leaf-fleas are even worse. Someone said, They don't bite people, because people don't have leaves. Lola writes, When the sun is beating down, they bite everything, even the wind. And we all have leaves. Leaves fall off when you stop growing, because childhood is all gone. And they grow back when you shrivel up, because love is all gone. Leaves spring up at will, writes Lola, just like tall grass. Two or three children in the village don't have any leaves, and those have a big childhood. A child like that is an only child, because it has a father and a mother who have been to school. The leaf-fleas turn older children into younger ones - a four-year-old into a three-year-old, a three-year-old into a one-year-old. Even a six-months-old, writes Lola, and even a newborn. And the more little brothers and sisters the leaf-fleas make, the smaller the childhood becomes.”

“Have you ever wanted to put your head in a blender and turn on the liquefy switch? (Tate)”

“In hundreds of years,' she continued, voice darker and sober now, 'I've only let myself love two people. You don't have that kind of time, though. You're mortal. You don't get to make a lot of mistakes before you kick it and if you wait, you get screwed over.”