“The cliche had it that kids were the future, but that wasn't it: they were the unreflective, active present. They were not themselves nostalgic, because they couldn't be, and they retarded nostalgia in their parents. Even as they were getting sick and being bullied and becoming addicted to heroin and getting pregnant, they were in the moment, and she wanted to be in it with them. She wanted to worry herself sick about schools and bullying and drugs.”

“Fuck, she was so sick of herself-herself and her fucking emotional retardation. How did people do this shit all the time, this wanting people, caring about them? How did they stand it, how did they ever get anything done? She was sick of being lost.”

“She wasn't all that interested, as a reader, in the reader. She was still partial to that increasingly eclipsed entity: the writer. Madeleine had a feeling that most semiotic theorists had been unpopular as children, often bullied or overlooked, and so had directed their lingering rage onto literature. They wanted to demote the author. They wanted a book, that hard-won, transcendent thing, to be a text, contingent, indeterminate, and open for suggestions. They wanted the reader to be the main thing. Because they were readers.Whereas Madeleine was perfectly happy with the idea of genius. She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself. She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.”

“She was addicted to literature like some people were addicted to heroin.”

“She remembered when they were kids and he'd caught the rock that the bullies had thrown at her. At six, she'd considered him a hero.At sixteen, she considered him a heartbreaker.”

“But she found herself drawn to Ivy because he wasn't like her at all, wasn't like anyone, really. Most people were different because they wanted to be noticed. ivy was different because he couldn't be anyone else”