“The incident with Dawn hadn't been one of my finer moments. I honestly hadn't expected to break any bones when I shoved her into a tree. Still, the incident had given me a dangerous reputation. The story had gained legendary status, and I liked to imagine that it was still being told around campfires late at night. Judging by the look on the girl's face, it was.”

“As I was escorted outside by the officers, my friends looked back at me with blank expressions. I don’t think they knew what to say to me. I had lied to them about my home life. They had always been there for me and probably would have understood if I had told them the truth from the start, but it was too late. All the lies I had told them about having a perfect family had been shattered by that one incident.”

“Life hands us lessons, and my lesson was to face this awful situation and grow from it, Blossom. I thought love had been taken away from me, but it hadn't been. I was still the same person who had loved Mr. Feingold and my old aunts and my cousins and my friends. I still ahd love inside of me, and I still had it to give. ”

“As a child I scribbled; and my favorite pastime during the hours given me for recreation was to ‘write stories’. Still, I had a dearer pleasure than this, which was the formation of castles in the air – the indulging in waking dreams – the following up trains of thought, which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary incidents.”

“I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?”

“I hadn't seen my dad get violent since the Great Spatula Incident, and I wasn't anxious to see a repeat of that.”