“It was deeper than some boy thinking she was cute. It was more like she was food and he was hungry. It was as if Mars needed her to survive.”

“Jana looked beyond him and saw Mars. She ate Mars for breakfast with her eyes.”

“Michael should have tried. Jana hated him for not being Romeo. She loved him with all her heart and hated him just the same. He should have killed himself over her."Dammit, Michael, love me!" Jana said out loud. The words flew from her heart. They were the colour of blood. "Love me, love me, love me!”

“Mars knew that love wasn't all red-paper valentines and candy hearts. Love wasn't always joy. Love could be hot-blooded pain down to the bone. Sometimes love was despair. And sometimes love was wrong.”

“Going to school on the Planet really is doing nothing. Youjust sit in the classes someone else tells you to sit in. Youlearn things you didn’t choose to learn from people youdidn’t choose to teach you. Then one day they tell you it’sover and you have to go out there and learn the world forreal.”

“She had told Kazan that she was bored with the roles she was playing because so many of them had been basically the same kind of empty-headed characterization. She wanted nothing ore than to challenge herself with more complex parts--and also wanted others to think of her as being more than a caricature....Anytime she had an opportunity to broaden her mind, she wanted to take advantage of it.”

“Granana doesn't understand what the big deal is. She didn't cry at Olivia's funeral, and I doubt she even remembers Olivia's name. Granana lost, like, ninety-two million kids in childbirth. All of her brothers died in the war. She survived the Depression by stealing radish bulbs from her neighbors' garden, and fishing the elms for pigeons. Dad likes to remind us of this in a grave voice, as if it explained her jaundiced pitilessness: "Boys. Your grandmother ate pigeons.”