“Well, now I'm all jealous. I wish I had little voices in my head. Guess I'll just have to settle for people really being out to get me." "Bitch," she said cordially. "Bimbo.”

“You're very welcome," she said, giving my hair a hard tug. "You should be used to being gawked at by now.""And yet I'm not.""Well, if it gets too bad, give me a signal, and I'll get up on the banquet table, toss my skirt over my head, and do a little dance. That way no one will be looking at you.”

“It now seemed to me that all my other guesses had been only self-pleasing dreams spun out of my wishes, but now I was awake.”

“I'm still missing you. Well I guess that I have, I guess that I have never really had you.”

“The big difference between my mom and me-- besides the fact that she is dead normal and I'm a magic-handling freak-- is that she's the real thing. She may have a slight problem seeing other people's points of view, but she's honest about it. She's a brass-bound bitch because she believes she knows best. I'm a brass-bound bitch because I don't want anyone getting close enough to find out what a whiny little knot of naked nerve endings I really am.”

“Without lifting her head, she said, “I want you to get out.” And right then I was sure: M had been born with the mean gene. It’s the way we come out, Toby said. Maybe M being mean wasn’t any different than Mike and Chad being gay, or me having freckles. Mean was just the way she came out. She hated me all right, but it was nothing personal.”