“Lighten up.” I yawned, pointing across the street to the diner. “If I got upset every time someone beat me, or chased me, or tried to rape me, I’d be crying in my cereal every morning. No one likes a whiner.”

“These days I just can't seem to say what I mean [...]. I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her.”

“If I had a dollar for every time someone told me I reminded them of Orafoura’s shadow, I’d have a penny more than ninety nine cents. And even then that’s because I muttered it to myself this morning in the shower.”

“I like to do things that frighten me. When I’m afraid, I understand more things. I want the feeling... All my instincts cry out against it, every morning anew. Then I say, ‘I should do it. If I don’t do it, no one will do it for me.”

“There were definitely parts of my character I didn’t approve of, and maybe from time to time I had moments when I didn’t like myself much. But I got through each day as it came to me, and so far I’d survived every thing life had thrown at me. I could only hope that the survival was worth the price I’d paid.”

“A brick could be used like Dracula uses binoculars. I swear that pervert peeps on me every night from the tree across the street.
”