“WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I was so girlie and ambitious, I was practically a drag queen. I wanted to be everything at once: a prima ballerina, an actress, a model, a famous artist, a nurse, an Ice Capades dancer, and Batgirl. I spent inordinate amounts of time waltzing around our living room with a doily on my head, imagining in great detail my promenade down the runway as the new Miss America, during which time I would also happen to receive a Nobel Prize for coloring.”

“I want to be so famous that drag queens will dress like me in parades when I'm dead.”

“My author role model is Kurata Misako. I want to be rich enough to drive from room to room in my home but also down to earth enough to let squirrels live in my hair.”

“What is it? A prize or something?No. It's not a prize and I'm not a prize. But it's mine. It belongs to me and I can only give it away once, and I want to be so sure when it happens. I don't want to say that the first time for me was bad or it didn't mean a thing.”

“I wanted everything to freeze, it was finally where I wanted it, and I whispered to my empty dining room, "Nobody move." Timothy was healthy, my dad was still sober, I had good friends, I was in love, my work as a counselor was so rewarding, but above all of that, I had a drag queen who strutted through my life, always at just the right time, teaching me that there is glitter in the darkness if only you remember to look in the right places. (265)”

“If I miss a goal, which sometimes happens when you set huge ones, I want the reassurance that I did everything I in my power to make it happen. I want the peace in knowing that it wasn't for lack of hustling that I missed a target for my dream. I want to know that the one thing under my control was under control.”