“So this had been all I wanted, a boy who understood how I felt. Now, though, I sometimes wished for more.”

“Even though it had only been two weeks since I’d seen him last, it felt like months, and sometimes I found myself wondering if our brief time together had been real at all. Yeah, it had been real. I had a heart that was cracked in two as a souvenir of just how real it all was.”

“I understood now: how nothing looked more beautiful than that scar of his, that borderline that separated what Jacob could have been had he stayed in that orphanage from who he is.”

“I never wished I’d been a man. I always felt like a woman and wanted to be a woman. I wanted to be fulfilled professionally and personally, as a woman. There are some who might say I had penis envy, but I only had penis admiration.”

“I ever wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and so marked.”

“The couch was green, so I felt comfortable wiping my boogers on it. I just wish it had been brown.”