“That girl in the backseat of the beater, I wonder if she's bored d restless, stuck in this small town, hating the slow, stoned laughter and the same rock song on the radio. I hope she caught a glimpse of me through the steam. Even if she only saw my tear widen and my legs kick off the ground, she might think I know where I'm going. She might think I've found a way.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“But the problem with me was that as soon as I started thinking about getting it together, I got this mad craving desire to fuck it up.”

“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.”

“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.”