“But it's not hell," Pete spoke with amazing confidence. "Not if you love him.”

“Milwaukee, Rebecca. Order and sobriety and a devotion to cleanliness that scours out the soul. Decent people doing their best to live decent lives, three's nothing really to hate them for, they do their jobs and maintain their property and love their children (most of the time); they take family vacations and visit relatives and decorate their houses for the holidays, collect some things and save up for other things; they're good people (most of them, most of the time), but if you were me, if you were young Pete Harris, you felt the modesty of it eroding you, depopulating you, all those little satisfactions and no big, dangerous ones; no heroism, no genius, no terrible yearning for anything you can't at least in theory actually have. If you were young lank-haired, pustule-plagued Pete Harris you felt like you were always about to expire from the safety of your life, its obdurate sensibleness, that Protestant love of the unexceptional; the eternal certainty of the faithful that flamboyance and the macabre are not just threatening but - worse - uninteresting.”

“we learn best by placing our 'confidence in men and women whose examples invite us to love what they love'(Robert Wilken).”

“She spoke throught her teeth. "Almost, dear. What were the real words you used? The bad words. It's okay to say them again, just this once." I shrugged, "fine. I said'. . . just 'cause Daddy wants you to suck on his ding-a-ling.”

“Maybe that was it - they were just afraid. Strange, they have me outnumbered and outgunned, but they're still so afraid. It's amazing the amount of cowardice privilege can afford.”

“Love is terrifying and hard and awful but it’s also amazing and beautiful, and there’s something about us, as humans, that wants that perfect relationship even though we know it’s probably unattainable, and even if we do manage to get it, holding on to t, helping it grow into something that will last a lifetime, well… it’s daunting in its impossibility.”

“I swear off dating until someone new and amazing sweeps me off my feet and makes me forget all the hard parts of falling in love.”