“Trixie seesawed between wishing everyone would leave her alone and wondering why everyone treated her like a leper.”

“What Trixie wanted, most of all, what she couldn't have - to go back to being the kind of girl who worried about things like science tests and whether any college would admit her, instead of being the kind of girl everyone worried about.”

“It was possible, Trixie supposed, that everyone had two faces: Some of us did a better job of hiding it than others.”

“At home I was raped by a guy i thought I loved' Trixie said, because thats what it was to her and always would be.”

“You didn't get past something like that, you go through it -- and for that reason alone, I understood more about her than she ever would have guessed.”

“A level of a house, his father has told him, is called a story. Nathaniel likes that. It makes him feel like maybe he is living between the covers of a book himself. Like maybe everyone in every home is sure to get a happy ending.”

“I've always sort of wondered: If everyone else's opinion is what matters, then do you ever really have one of your own?”