“Looking at him like that, I felt like I needed something from him, or somebody, and that probably meant that he also needed something from me, or somebody, but the revelation was like looking at spots on a slide. Knowing that it meant something to somebody wasn't the same as it meaning something to you.”

“I'm bored. I need to be entertained. Sam is moping. I may kill him with his own guitar. It would give me something to do and also make him say something. Two birds with one stone!”

“She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness. It was the way she felt when she looked at the stars.”

“That was pretty much all you needed to know about Cole, right there. He saw something he didn't quite understand, liked it, and took it to be his.”

“Don't panic. Are you sitting? You probably don't need to sit. Well, possibly. At least lean on something.”

“Cole kissed me.. It was the sort of kiss that would take a long time to recover from. You could take each of our kisses, from the very first moment we'd met and put them on a slide in a microscope, and I was pretty sure what you'd find. Even an expert would see nothing on the first one, and then on the next one, the start of something - mostly outnumbered, easily destroyed - and then more and more until finally this one, something that even the untrained eye could spot. Evidence that we'd probably never be cured of each other, but we might be able to keep it from killing us.”

“Jack had been a jerk that night, even though I tried not to remember that part. It felt like I wasn't missing him properly if I let myself remember how much I'd despised him sometimes. Instead I tried to remember what he looked like grinning and dirty in the driveway, though these days it felt more like I was remembering a memory of a memory of his smile instead of the smile itself. When I thought too hard about that, it made me feel weightless and untethered.”