“My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for.”

“I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags.”

“Frank told me once--and I don't know whether he's right or not, and I didn't tell Sam this either--that all the best undercovers have a dark thread woven into them, somewhere.”

“I listen to the things people want out of love these days and they blow my mind. I go to the pub with the boys from the squad and listen while they explain, with minute precision, exactly what shape a woman should be, what bits she should shave how, what acts she should perform on which date and what she should always or never do or say or want; I eavesdrop on women in cafes while they reel off lists of which jobs a man is allowed, which cars, which labels, which flowers and restaurants and gemstones get the stamp of approval, and I want to shout, Are you people out of your tiny minds?”

“I know what the right woman, at the right moment, can do to a man- not that Tessie seemed to have got away scot-free herself. Some people should never meet. The fallout spreads too wide and gets into the ground for much too long.”

“My friend Emma, who likes things to add up neatly, claims that this is because my parents died when I was too young to take it in: they were there one day and gone the next, crashing through that fence so hard and fast they left it splintered for good. When I was Lexie Madison for eight months she turned into a real person to me, a sister I lost or left behind on the way; a shadow somewhere inside me, like the shadows of vanishing twins that show up on people's X-rays once in a blue moon. Even before she came back to find me I knew I owed her something, for being the one who lived.”

“Mental' isn't a reason. It comes in an awful lot of flavors, most of them are non-violent, and every single one of them has some kind of logic, whether or not it makes sense to you and me.”