“Funnily enough, it is the subject one dreads talking about at length one ends up talking about at length, often without the slightest provocation.”

“We were freshman, taking her film class, and we'd spend hours after school sitting in her classroom talking about any old thing—life, sex, Forrest Gump.”

“When he talked about a Higher Power, he used words like gratifying, restorative and life-changing. It was something that "got you through the tough times," which "any young person could manage with a little hard work, trust and tenacity." God was a trip to Cancun.”

“Well, it doesn't look good. Makes me look like one of those unloved latchkey children they make after-school specials about.""Don't sell yourself short. You're more Masterpiece Theatre.”

“The days shuffled by like bland schoolgirls. I didn’t notice their individual faces, only their basic uniform: day and night, day and night.I had no patience for showers or balanced meals. I did a lot of lying on floors — childish certainly, but when one can lie on floors without anyone seeing one, trust me, one will lie on a floor. I discovered, too, the fleeting yet discernible joy of biting into a Whitman’s chocolate and throwing the remaining half behind the sofa in the library. I could read, read, read until my eyes burned and the words floating like noodles in soup.”

“If all histories have a period known as The Golden Age, somewhere betweenThe Beginning and The End, I suppose those Sundays during Fall Semesterat Hannah's were just that, or, to quote one of Dad's treasuredcharacters of cinema, the illustrious Norma Desmond as she recalled the lostera of silent film: "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces.”

“Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last.”