“I wondered how long an adult could talk to a kid without using the word "but." About forty seconds'd be the record for most of them and that's on a good day.”

“It's funny how when you're little, you miss all the little lies. They float right past you, but you don't wonder about them much. For a long time, you think this is just something adults still do after being kids - pretend. Then one day you wake up and realize most of the world you're in is built on someone's make-believe.”

“I didn't like what that word-'childhood'-conjured up, or rather, I didn't like the way most people use it: that presumption of innocence and starry-eyed wonder. The only good thing about childhood is that no one really remembers it, or rather, that's the only thing about it to like: this forgetting. What else could possibly lie beneath that blissful oblivion but shame: a dark knowledge of that terrible badge of weakness, that inescapable servitude (bearable only thanks to the slow revelation that we could inflict cruelty and evil on the weaker kids), a sickening awareness that just about everything there is to understand was beyond us, made even worse by the lies and inaccuracies that adults feel entitled to spread around, deliberately, or because they don't know any better, about themselves or about the nature of reality?”

“I stared at them for a good long time, wondering if they didn’t know how to use their wings, of if they just didn’t know they had them, until it was too late to save themselves.”

“Regardless, I often wish that the two groups - adults and kids - could find a way to get along better. Some sort of treaty or something. The biggest problem is, the adults have one of the most effective recruitment strategies in the world.Give them enough time, and they'll turn any kid into one of them.”

“While Owen and Miles talk sports, I people watch. And this is what I see: teenagers trying to act like adults. Or how they think adults act. But mostly they look ridiculous, and I wonder what they don't want to do something that's more fun than drinking, smoking, flirting, and making out. Why are those activities considered to be fun?”