“I never shut up'Yes, you do'Not much'I could make you shut up'Oh, yeah?...How?”

“One thing," I said, when we had broken apart and the swirling feeling in my head subsided. "Maybe...don't tell your mom too much about this. I think she has ideas." "What?" he asked, all innocence, as he put an arm around my shoulders and led me back toward his house. "Don't your parents cheer and stare when you make out with someone? Is that weird where you come from? I guess they don't get to see it much, though. From jail, I mean." "Shut it, Weintraub. If I knock you down in the snow, these kids will swarm and eat you.”

“Stuart, who had just witnessed me go through an entire rainbow of emotions and experiences. There was parents-have-just-been-jailed me, stuck-in-a-strange-town me, insane-and-can't-shut-up me, kind-of-snarky-to-the-strange-guy-trying-to-be-helpful me, breakup me, and the extremely popular jump-on-top-of-you-unexpectedly me.”

“I could pretend, at least, and if I pretended long enough, maybe I could make it into a reality.”

“i get a little romantic about the old Empire State. Just looking at it makes me want to play some Frank Sinatra tunes and sway a little. I have a crush on a building. I'd been in there several times but never to work. I always knew there were offices in there but the face never penetrated, really. You don't work in the Empire State Building. You propose in the Empire State Building. You sneak a flask up there and raise a toast to the whole city of New York.”

“This pool is a triumph of imagination. That's how you win at life, Gin. You have to imagine your way through. Never say something can't be done. There's always a solution, even if it's weird.”

“I followed your footsteps," he said, in answer to the unspoken question. "Snow makes it easy." I had been tracked, like a bear. "Sorry to make you go to all that trouble," I said. "I didn't have to go that far, really. You're about three streets over. You just kept going in loops." A really inept bear.”