“When she packed up to leave, she knew that she was saying goodbye to something important, which was not that bad, in a way, because it meant that at least you had said hello to it to begin with...”

“I love you," she said, and I knew she meant it because she spoke the words from the heart at the center of her chest. This, at least, had not been left behind at the hospital.”

“But she wished she had had the guts to go up to him and say hello. Or possibly break his legs, she wasn't sure which.”

“As his widow, she knew who she was and what she had inherited. She had loved him in her way and sometimes missed him. She knew what words like "loved" and "missed" meant when she thought of her husband. When she thought of Blunt, on the other hand, she was unsure what anything meant except the sonnets she had written about their love affair.”

“She had me from Hello," I say to Zizzy."What's wrong with you dude? She never said Hell. She always welcomes us with blood dripping fangs and a horde of corpses surrounding her." Zizzy protests."Monsters have their own way to say Hello, moron. They just need someone to get it, that this is actually hello.”

“At once, she dropped her gaze 2 the floor so she wouldn’t have 2 meet the stares because she knew exactly how she looked, which was bad, very bad, extra bad from the top of her dyed head to the tip of her tennis-shoed toes. She had an enormous urge to look up and say to the class, “I’m prettier than this. Really.”