“Experiencing yourself out of context, divorced from your usual point of view, skews your perspective – it’s like hearing your voice on an answering machine. It’s almost like meeting a stranger; or discovering a talent you never knew you had.”

“...Usually i’d sit back and just enjoy the view for what it was because it’s not often you come across something so ridiculously out of place, a girl like you, on the subway, it’s like spotting a unicorn at the zoo.I reasoned how to pull this off, to get you, to say hi, to ask your name, what your voice sounded like, if you had a cute smile because i like cute smiles. In ten minutes I had a thousand thoughts of you and you had no clue...”

“It’s rather like your voice. You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven’t any choice. But it’s what you say that counts. It’s what distinguishes all great art from the other kind.”

“Maybe, when you meet the right person, it's like meeting a piece of yourself that you never knew existed because somebody had to open it up for you. Pull it out of you. Point it out to you.”

“It’s funny—when people call you “shy,” they usually smile. Like it’s cute, some funny little habit you’ll grow out of when you’re older, like the gaps in your grin when your baby teeth fall out. If they knew how it felt—really being shy, not just unsure at first—they wouldn’t smile. Not if they knew how the feeling knots up your stomach or makes your palms sweat or robs you of the ability to say anything that makes sense. It’s not cute at all.”

“Ah,” said a voice from the doorway, “having your annual ‘everyone thinks Will is a lunatic’ meeting, are you? “It’s biannual,” said Jem. “And no, this is not that meeting.”