“These were such friendly people, they didn't notice how crabby we were, and before you knew it everyone was as happy as they were.”

“I didn't point out that Courtney and I were hardly BFFs. In Mom's world everyone under the age of eighteen was friends with everyone else, like we were all part of some secret society of minors.”

“How were we to know we were happy?”

“We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?”

“David's mother would often tell him stories were alive. They weren't alive in the way people were alive,or even dogs or cats. People were alive whether you chose to notice them or not, while dogs tended to make you notice them if they decided that you weren't paying enough attention. Cats, meanwhile, were very good at pretending people didn't exist at all when it suited them...”

“Veronika had noticed that a lot of people she knew would talk about the horros in other people's lives as if they were genuinely concerned to help them, but the truth was that they took pleasure in the suffering of others, because that made them believe they were happy and that life had been generous with them”