“In the fall of the year I turned sixteen, I jumped out of my bedroom window and ran away. The night’s black roads wound like long stretches of river. … The streets ribboned out in all directions. I lifted first one foot and then the other, ready to run down all of them”

“Well, the first reaction was, What smoke? When I looked and saw it, and we all ran to the back where we were far away from the flames-cowards as we are, you know-all sat around the emergency door and even tested the emergency door, ready to jump out. Of course, I said, Beatles and children first.”

“...and when I lift my head to scream out my fury, a million stars turn black and die. No one can see them, but they are my tears.”

“When I was a girl I would look out my bedroom window at the caterpillars; I envied them so much. No matter what they were before, no matter what happened to them, they could just hide away and turn into these beautiful creatures that could fly away completely untouched.”

“I ran away one day. He was running in the same direction.”

“Why was I standing on the street when the window feel out of the building? Why did the bus run over me? Because it was my turn in the barrel, that's why.”