“I realized that my kisses with Dane had become a form of punctuation, the quotations or the hasty dash at the end of a conversation”

“Dane touched my chin and lifted my face upward, and kissed me gently. Only then did I understand that Dane had always been a friend I had slept with, and how entirely different that was from having a lover who could be a friend.”

“But still, it looked completely natural, as if we had been kissing at the ends of sentences for ages, while the rest of the world was still hung up on punctuation.”

“This morning I awoke to the realization that I'd been living my life within a parenthetical statement. It was a pathetic situation, more so since I'd suddenly become aware of how trapped I was within my own punctuation.”

“I realized that my time in this place had come to an end; now that my schooldays were over, I no longer belonged here. I had always been a stranger and, if I stayed, I would become a stranger to myself as well.”

“Beneath the conversations and silences and reconnecting intimacy, I tried to reconcile the adult Hardy had become with the boy I had known and longed for. It troubled me to realize they weren't the same...but of course I wasn't the same either.”