“Imagine your body replaced by dust and vapor, and having a tingly feeling in your stomach without even having a stomach. Imagine having to concentrate just to keep yourself from dispersing into nothing.I got so angry, a flash of lightning crackled inside me.“Don’t be that way,” Amos chuckled. “It’s only for a few minutes.”

“But the problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose. At some point – scarred and exhausted – you either accept that you must become a woman – that you are a woman – or you die. This is the brutal, root truth of adolescence – that it is often a long, painful campaign of attrition. Those self-harming girls, with the latticework of razor cuts on their arms and thighs, are just reminding themselves that their body is a battlefield. If you don’t have the stomach for razors, a tattoo will do, or even just the lightning snap of the earring gun in Claire’s Accessories. There. There you are. You have just dropped a marker pin on your body, to reclaim yourself, to remind you where you are: inside yourself. Somewhere. Somewhere in there.”

“You ever had a shotgun bullet blast through your stomach? No? Me neither. But I have a feeling what I felt...”

“It's all right to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation”

“It’s always good to give respect, even when you might not feel it’s due. It serves two purposes in particular: one, you’ll soothe the angry beast, should the person have a temper—by visually and verbally submitting to their imagined authority, and; two, by displaying that you acknowledge their authority (especially if others don’t), you are likely to gain favor which can be used to your advantage.”

“If it feels this good to have this on my arm, I can’t imagine how it’s going to feel to get a ring on your finger.”