“One day you fall for this boy. And he touches you with his fingers. And he burns holes in your skin with his mouth. And it hurts when you look at him. And it hurts when you don’t. And it feels like someone’s cut you open with a jagged piece of glass.”

“He'll pinch a cigarette between his fingers. He'll take a drag, blow that drag between his lips. He'll look at the firl with eyes the colour of the sky before it turns black and he will see heaven, and the pictures of all those other girls floating inside his head will blow away like the clouds of the cigarette and he'll see only the girl inside himself and the world will stop.”

“When a horse falls, foam comes out of its mouth. When it falls, the legs of the horse thrash and the horse is no good... So somebody shoots it. The horse turns into glue. A machine puts the glue into bottles and children squeeze the bottles to get the glue out and stick bits of paper onto cards. Glue gets on the children's hands and the children eat the glue. And the children become the horse. ”

“He wore pantysuits. Women's pantysuits. He wore high heels too, or medium heels at least. Panty hose. And angora sweaters. I never saw him in a dress or a skirt, but he loved those pantysuits. He used to sit in his office with a cigarette, striking a very masculine pose. But he had on a pantsuit with pantyhose–heavy beard–he was a very typical ex-marine, to some degree. He had a very deep voice, physical mannerisms like a man and he was totally ludicrous. Yet he was completely at ease. He was a very self-confident man. He said that he was already into being a transvestite by the time he enlisted in the Marines. And when he was making a landing in the Pacific, he was wearing bra and panties under his uniform.”

“Of course, he showed me this one afternoon when he was skipping class. When trolls cut classes, you think they are losers. When the beautiful and/or reasonably erudite do the same thing to sit on the library steps and read poetry, you think they are on to something deep. You see only deep brown wavy hair and strong legs, well honed by years of Ultimate Frisbee. You see that book of T. S. Eliot poems held by the hand with the long, graceful fingers, and you never stop to think that it shouldn't take half a semester to read one book of poems... that maybe he is not so much reading as getting really high every morning and sleeping it off on the library steps, forcing the people who actually go to class to step or trip over him.”

“Fear can’t hurt you,” she said. “When it washes over you, give it no power. It’s a snake with no venom. Remember that. That knowledge can save you.”

“When your children are very young it is impossible to imagine a life where they will not live with you, where you will not see them every day or know what they are doing. As they grow up, you gradually untangle your 'self' from their 'selves' until the day arrives when you look at your child and realize the role you play in their life is no longer a central one. It's hard to recognize that your child is independent, but it's also incredibly liberating."-- from Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story”