“She would be a mentor and an inspiration to girls like herself, the quiet ones who'd sleepwalked their way through high school, knowing nothing except that they couldn't possibly be happy with any of the choices the world seemed to be offering them.”

“She tried to remind herself that beauty was only skin deep, but that didn't offer any helpful excuses when she was berating herself for never knowing what to say to people. There was nothing more depressing than an ugly girl with no personality.”

“A light, this side of the hills toward Argyle, / flowed like fog through the hollows, rose to the depth / of the hills, illumined me. I faded in it / as the world faded in me, dissolved in the light. / No one to know and nothing knowable. / Oh, we know that knowing is not our way; / but, the choice is ours, would make it our way, would leave / the world for the same world made knowable.”

“Except Caitlyn. High school dating, drill team, school spirit—it all seemed silly to her. Why did it feel like high school was crushing her soul? Shehad nothing concrete she could point to. All she knew was that she didn’t belong here.She preferred old, used clothes to new ones; her iPod was full of classical music; and photos of castles and reproductions of old European artcovered her bedroom walls, including a Renaissance painting of a young girl in white, named Bia. It should have been pop singers on her wall, ormovie stars”

“I thought maybe if she could express herself rather than suffer herself, if she had a way to relieve the burden, she lived for nothing more than living, with nothing to get inspired by, to care for, to call her own, she helped out at the store, then came home and sat in her big chair and stared at her magazines, not at them but through them, she let the dust accumulate on her shoulders.”

“When you are a high school girl, there is nothing more miraculous than a high school boy.”