“She didn't want to know how much Ray had paid for it because that had nothing to do with its real value.”

“There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with.”

“Suddenly it was obvious to Connor why they don't teach it. Once education was restructured and corporatized, they didn't want kids knowing how close they came to toppling the government. They didn't want kids to know how much power they really had.”

“but she realized that she wanted him to know her. She wanted him to understand her, if only because she had strange sense that he was the kind of man she could fall in love with, even if she didn't want to.”

“I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be.”

“She didn't know how much she'd been hoping that he still loved her, until she felt how much it hurt to realize he didn't.”

“She was doing it because she had nothing to lose, because her life was one of constant, day to day frustration.”

“I can't say, over the miles, that I had learned what I had wanted to know because I hadn't known what I wanted to know. But I did learn what I didn't know I wanted to know.”

“She didn't want to have anything to do with the party. She was tired of feeling like she didn't fit in, but she didn't want to go home, either, because she was a tired of being lonely and she was a little drunk.”

“I know I had everything, but not because I had it. I know because afterwards I had nothing else.”