“She might not be as strong as everyone she met, or as fast, or even as smart. But she could bullshit with the best of them. Combine that with a license to carry, and a girl could more than get by in this life.”

“Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?”

“She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.”

“She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.”

“He is tremendously strong, she thought, and liked the idea, even as she had feared that strength when she first met him”

“She could remember the girl she used to be with fondness, but it wasn’t a youth she cared to recapture.”

“She's not a bad girl because
She made me see, hmmm…
How love could be.
But she's a bad girl because (bad girl because)
She wants to be free, hmmmm… (bad girl because)
She wants to be free”

“She was sitting in a garden more beautiful than even her rampaging imagination could ever have conjured up, and she was being serenaded by trees.”

“She was forced to consider the startling fact that the love of her life might not actually be someone with whom she could spend a lifetime.”

“She did not care very much for other little girls, but if she had plenty of books she could console herself.”