“Incredible that the best route to winning friends is not necessarily kindness or flattery, but letting them know you won't tolerate their bullshit.”

“Check it out," Gideon says. "I prayed to god to send a sign that I wasn't going to get kicked out of school, and a plane flew overhead. And then another one."Molly put her hands on her hips. "Behold the celestial event so incredible it happens every 34 seconds." Gid stares at her, uncomprehending. "It's called a flight path," She says. "Your a moron.”

“All our luxuries won't keep some men from dying -- it can only be a matter of time until I see it happen -- but in our lazaret death will creep silently onto the operating table or nestle between clean sheets.”

“I wish I wasn't an imperial highness or an ex-grand duchess. I'm sick of people doing things to me because of what I am. Girl-in-white-dress. Short-one-with-fringe. Daughter-of-the-tsar. Child-of-the-ex-tyrant. I want people to look and see me, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, not the caboose on a train of grand duchesses. Someday, I promise myself, no one will be able to hear my name or look at my picture and suppose they know all about me. Someday I will do something bigger than what I am.”

“Like most girls, I want a lot. Fame and fortune. Equal rights. Shoes no one else has. But I'd trade all that in for the perfect guy. (Don't tell me there's something wrong with that. I don't know of a single person who doesn't spend most of her time thinking about love.) Anyway, ever since I could think, I have been imagining and reimagining the exact sort of boy I want to love and who would love me back. Basically, I imagine someone who has all the good attributes of the male species and whose bad ones wouldn't ruin my life.”

“Why does everyone have to be so cool all the time? And also why do white people always have to act like black people to avoid looking like dorks?”

“I spend a lot of time trying to convince myself that nothing really matters except being alive.”