“Lies are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some are more truthful than others, maybe, but in the end the only thing that counts is what you can make people believe.”

“I learned to tell stories from my mom. "Your dad's not feeling well today," she'd say. I had an accident. She'd say, Remember what happened. You're a clumsy girl. You walk into a door. You tripped and stumbled down a staircase. My favorite story: He doesn't mean to.She was so good at telling stories that I started to believe them after a while. Maybe I was clumsy. Maybe it was my fault for provoking him.Maybe he didn't really mean to.”

“We all need mantras, I guess - stories we tell ourselves to keep us going.”

“That was what her parents did not understand—and had never understood—about stories. Liza told herself storied as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories.”

“Still, I worry. They say that in the old days, love drovepeople to madness. That’s bad enough. The Book of Shhhalso tells stories of those who died because of love lost ornever found, which is what terrifies me the most.The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both whenyou have it and when you don’t”

“Maybe Lindsay and I are best friends and we hate each other, both. Maybe I’m only one math class away from being a slut like Anna Cartullo. Maybe I am like her, deep down. Maybe we all are: just one lunch period away from eating alone in the bathroom. I wonder if it’s ever really possible to know the truth about someone else, or if the best we can do is just stumble into each other, heads down, hoping to avoid collision.”

“Live free or die.Four words. Thirteen letters. Ridges, bumps, swirls under my fingertips. Another story. We cling tightly to it, and our belief turns it to truth.”