“There’s no point in fighting the tide. It ebbs. It flows. You ride it.”

“I couldn’t move. It’s something I’m still ashamed of. You always wonder how you’ll handle a moment of crisis; if you’ve got what it takes to fight or if you’ve just been deluding yourself all along that somewhere deep inside you there’s steel beneath the magnolia. Now I knew the truth. There wasn’t. I was all petals and pollen. Good for attracting the procreators who could ensure the survival of our species, but not a survivor myself. I was Barbie after all.”

“If you'd just fight like you fuck, you'd've walked out of this room the day I carried you in.”

“There are only two things to worry about in life: either you’re free or you’re not. If you’re free, there’s nothing to worry about. If you’re not, you kick the shit out of everything around you until you are.”

“Like is an emotion. Emotions”—he raised a hand, made a fist, clenched it tightly—“are like holding water. You open your hand, there’s nothing there. Better to be a weapon than a woman.”

“The man kisses me and I just hop right on him like he's the hottest new ride at Disneyland.”

“You might be able to thrash your way out of a spiderweb, but thrashing in quicksand doesn’t work. The harder you fight, the more ground you lose. Struggling merely expedites your inevitable defeat.”