“She's not my girlfriend. We're just friends," I said automatically. "Shut up. You're so whipped I should buy you a saddle." Which he would've said about any girl I talked to, talked about, or even looked at in the hall. "She's not. Nothing's happened. We just hang out." "You're so full of crap, you could pass for a toilet. You like her, Wate. Admit it." Link wasn't big on subtleties, and I don't think he could imagine hanging out with a girl for any reason other than maybe she played lead guitar, except for the obvious ones.”

“You're kidding, right?" Ezra barked. "We're not just going to wait." "I suppose we could help people clean up a bit," "Girl!" Ezra called out. "Big eyes!" Winter turned from what she was looking at. "Are you talking to me?”

“Damn, damn, damn," she said. "I never said why I like you, and now I have to go.""That's okay," he said."It's because you're kind," she said. "And because you get all my jokes...""Okay." He laughed."And you're smarter than I am.""I am not.""And you look like a protagonist." She was talking as fast as she could think. "You look like the person who wins in the end. You're so pretty, and so good. You have magic eyes," she whispered. "And you make me feel like a cannibal.""You're crazy.""I have to go." She leaned over so the receiver was close to the base."Eleanor - wait," Park said. She could hear her dad in the kitchen and her heartbeat everywhere."Eleanor - wait - I love you.”

“It wasn't about how she looked, which was pretty, even though she was always wearing the wrong clothes and those beat-up sneakers. It wasn't about what she said in class--usually something no one else would've thought of, and if they had, something they wouldn't have dared to say. It wasn't that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious. It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn't.”

“Yeah whatever," Andrew said impatiently. "He came back to the room that night and kept talking about this girl he'd seen at the stargazing. He was shy, and so I told him if he pointed you out, I'd try to finagle a meeting." I swear, Andrew's the only person in the world who could use a word like finagle with a straight face. "But he was talking about me," I said. Andrew shrugged. "When we figured it out, we had a good laugh about it," he said defensively. "But of course you were my girlfriend. So that was that.”

“Will you let me lift you?" he said. "Just let me lift you. Just let me see how light you are." "All right," she said. "Do you want me to take off my coat?""Yes, yes, yes," he said. "Take off your coat."She stood. She let her coat fall to the sofa."Can I do it now?" he said."Yes."He put his hands under her arms. He raised her off the floor and then put her down gently. "Oh you're so light!" he shouted. "Your'e so light, you're so fragile, you don't weigh any more than a suitcase. Why, I could carry you, I could carry you anywhere, I could carry you from one end of New York to the other." He got his hat and coat and ran out of the house.”