“honestly, I like everything, boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny.”

“Disco is the best floor show in town. It's very democratic, boys with boys, girls with girls, girls with boys, blacks and whites, capitalists and Marxists, Chinese and everything else, all in one big mix.”

“Maybe it was true, and being a girl could be about interest rates and skinny jeans, riding bikes and wearing pink. Not about any one thing, but everything.”

“A girl meets a boy, Ed, and everything changes, or so she says.”

“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.”

“Nafai knew the rule: when a man acts like a child, he's boyish, and everyone's delighted; when a boy acts the same way, he's childish, and everyone tells him to be a man.”

“While in America beautiful is skinny, in Barbados it's thick — girls with huge butts and nice curves.”

“I get so much mail from young girls who say, 'I look up to you, you're not as skinny as everyone else, I think you're beautiful' … So when they say that my body is 'ugly' and 'disgusting,' what does that make those girls feel like?”

“I knew I liked her then, really liked her, this girl with an explanation for everything.”

“Girls scare me more than boys. Boys are cruel. Girls are mean.”