“An amusing city, Chicago, any way you look at it. I'm afraid we are in for the time of our lives.”

“A Republican is a man who wants you to go t'church every Sunday. A Democrat says if a man wants to have a glass of beer, he can have it.”

“Leave the fireworks for those who cast no spark of their own.”

“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.”

“I'm not trouble at all. I'm just a guy trying to get a girl to give him the time of day. I'm like every song on the radio.”

“Did she look at us that first week and see past the glossed hair and the shiny legs, our glittered brow bones and girl bravado? See past all that to everything beneath, all our miseries, the way we all hated ourselves but much more everyone else? Could she see past all of that to something else, something quivering and real, something poised to be transformed, turned out, made? See that she could make us, stick her hands in our glitter-gritted insides and build us into magnificent teen gladiators?”

“We chased her across the Pont-Neuf and through the Bois de Boulogne, kicking up leaves, and one day we knew that no matter where we might find ourselves in the world, Paris would be an ache in our hearts. Yes, we were young students in Paris. We had gone there because we knew it was the city of love and learning and light. Where it would lead was not as important as where we were at the moment. Looking at the city, we thought we saw our whole lives. Perhaps we did.”