“She's all over us like maggots on garbage, just because I interfered with one pickpocket yesterday.”

“Tomorrow here is just like yesterday, warmed over.”

“How do I look?”She was wearing a pair of tiny jean shorts and a bright pink T-shirt. Her blond hair was matted on one side and there were dirt smudges all over her arms, legs, and face.Gabriel hesitated. “Like a Barbie doll that got run over by a garbage truck.”“Wow. Really, Gabriel?”

“There are times in the lives of most of us, when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.”

“Obsessing over a boy is like throwing precious time into the garbage, and all I have to show for it is chewed-off fingernails, self-doubt, and emotional distress.”

“She hissed, right there behind my ear, and I had the horrible idea she was spitting maggots into my hair. Why maggots were a problem when I was about to be dead, I didn’t know, but the idea completely grossed me out. “In the womb I heard you die, for no one lives when a banshee cries.” I wasn’t just going to die. I was going to be rhymed to death. That simply wasn’t fair.”