“high school guys only appear hot to high school girls. its something to do with the fluorescent lighting in the classrooms, i think. They're actually really skinny and spotty, and they have giant feet”

“I had this whole plan when I graduated high school: I was going to go to college, date a few guys, and then meet THE guy at the end of my freshman year, maybe at the beginning of my sophomore year. We'd be engaged by graduation and married the next year. And then, after some traveling, we'd start our family. Four kids, three years apart. I wanted to be done by the time I was 35.”

“Lincoln,” Sam had asked him on one of those nights, the summer before their senior year, “do you think we’ll get married some day?”“I hope so,” he’d whispered. He didn’t usually think about it like that, like “married.” He thought about how he never wanted to be without her. About how happy she made him and how he wanted to go on being that happy for the rest of his life. If a wedding could promise him that, he definitely wanted to get married.“Wouldn’t it be romantic,” she said, “to marry your high school sweetheart? When people ask us how we met I’ll say, ‘We met in high school. I saw him, and I just knew.’ And they’ll say, ‘Didn’t youever wonder what it would be like to be with someone else?”

“I think I missed my window," he said."What window?""My get-a-life window. I think I was supposed to figure all this stuff out somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-six, and now it's too late.""It's not too late," she said. "You're getting a life. You've got a job, you're saving up to move out. You're meeting people. You went to a bar...""And that was a disaster. Actually, everything has been a disaster since I quit school.""You didn't quit school," she said. He could hear her rolling her eyes. "You finished your master's degree. Another master's degree.""Everything has been a disaster since I decided my life as it was wasn't good enough.""It WASN'T good enough," she said."It was good enough for me.""Then why have you been trying so hard to change it?”

“Bono met his wife in high school," Park says."So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers."I’m not kidding," he says."You should be," she says, "we’re sixteen.""What about Romeo and Juliet?""Shallow, confused," then dead."I love you, Park says."Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers."I’m not kidding," he says."You should be.”

“You’re the only girl I’ve ever touched. And I feel like itwas supposed to be that way. I touch you and my whole body …rings. Like a bell or something. And Icould touch other girls, and maybe there would be something, you know, like maybe there would benoise. But not like with you.”

“Why are tall guys always attracted to short women? Not just moderately short women, either... Tiny women. Polly Pockets. The tallest guys always-always-always go for the shortest girls. Always.It's like they're so infatuated with their own height that they want to be with someone who makes them feel even taller. Someone they can tower over. A little doll that will make them feel even bigger and stronger.”