“We have work to do if you are not to be a total failure like high-waisted, acid-wash jeans.”

“I've never done acid, finding it hard to go willingly to a place that could be frightening, hellish, and totally beyond my control. A place much like high school.”

“but Alex's last girlfriend? now there was a female human being who had worked hard to deserve her given moniker. As far as i was concerned, she was going to that special circle of hell reserved for Hitler, Jusin Bieber and the man who invented high-waisted jeans.”

“my stomach turned and burned with the acid of failure”

“How we feel is not who we are. We might feel like failures, but as long as we are still trying, we are not failures. We are works in progress.”

“Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles.”