“Nothing short of religion could persuade a normal girl to make herself look so awful.”

“Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.”

“At the time, Nixon was normalizing relations with China. I figured that if he could normalize relations, then so could I.”

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

“A girl looking for emotion could starve in L. A.”

“I'm going to be so normal that when people look up normal in the dictionary, my name will be there.”

“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy; for girls it's like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.”

“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.”

“The future is there," Cayce hears herself say, "looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now.”

“There are so many beautiful girls around that after a while you start looking for someone who can make you laugh”