“Love is the only thing in the world worth having. You must never loose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.”

“This is what amazes me: that people are new every day. That they are never the same. You must always invent them, and they must always invent themselves, too.”

“If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit.This is the way the world is made now.”

“I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.”

“Here are the top three things I’ve learned in my twenty-two years on the planet:1. Never wipe your butt with poison ivy.2. People are like ants: Just a few of them give all the orders. And most of them spend their lives getting squashed.3. There are no happy endings, only breaks in the regular action.Of all of them, number three is really the only one you have to keep in mind”

“Take down the walls.Otherwise you must live closely, in fear, building barricades against the unknown, saying prayers against the darkness, speaking verse of terror and tightness.Otherwise you may never know hell, but you will not find heaven, either. You will not know fresh air and flying.”

“I can admit, now, that I must have loved Lena. Not in an Unnatural way, but my feelings for her must have been a kind of sickness. How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?”