“The cutthroat savagery of high school romance inspired in nearly all adults a collective amnesia. Having survived it themselves, they locked those memories far away in some dark chamber of their subconscious where things that are too terrible to contemplate are permanently stored.”

“...and yes, it was a high school romance, but it was still the kind of romance where I thought we were trying to find a way to make it forever...”

“[They] talked mostly of their memories, for the past was all they had - the present being such a changable, odd thing, and the future too far away.”

“High school wasn't a trial by fire or some ordeal that had to be survived. It was all a big joke. You just had to provide the laugh track.”

“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things - naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror - are too terrible to really grasp ever at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself - quite to one's surprise - in an entirely different world.”

“Those who tread 'adult' as a term of approval cannot hope to be considered adult themselves. When I became a man I put away childish things, along with the desire to be very grown up.”