“Shards of glass fell down like lacerated rain”

“Broken locks and bruised knees and borrowed lipgloss and rain on the streets”

“The newspaper got it all wrong. They should have called me a harlot and a slut, a poseur and a tease, a nubile and naive,a slattern and a sleaze, a vandalist and anarchist, a dirty dilettante with a fatal and fervent disease. Because I was all of those things in the twelve days when there was too much rain and I was burning and I found and lost Justine.”

“I saw this girl dancing, and I moved closer to her because I liked the way she looked, haughty and sexy but not in a slutty way, and when I got closer to her, I realized she was me and I was looking at my reflection in the mirror. I looked like the kind of girl I'd always wanted to befriend.”

“In the alley where I last saw Justine, there was no sun. The storefronts displayed carnation bouquets and orthopedic shoes and hearing aids, but in the alley, these same stores were just dark walls, and looking at them was like looking at the back of someone who has turned and walked away from you.”

“I don't know why, but whenever I'd look at Amber, all determined and long-legged, I'd imagine her climbing out of a car wreck while the slow, sluggish passengers burned inside.”

“I've read Flowers in the Attic and The Other Side of Midnight and Go Ask Alice and I don't want to read any more books where the girl dies in the end.”