"And please, stay away from those books you devour. They are putting the most fantastical tales into your head."

"We are the dead. We are the keepers of the stories. We hold the history of blood and promises. We are speaking. Are you listening? Will you hear?"

"I've had so many bikini waxes, I cry every time I see a Popsicle stick."

"Any good world would allow for us to have free will, yes?" he continued. "Can we agree to this point? But once human beings have free will, they also have the ability to make choices - and commit evil. Thus, this very good thing, free will, allows the possibility of evil into our fine world."

"But we can't go back. We can only go forward."

"You can't believe how bleeding scary the sea is! There's, like, whales and storms and shit! They don't bloody tell you that!"

"I've heard it said that God is in the details. It's the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it."

"What did I do to make Mommy leave?"You didn't do anything. This isn't your fault."Then why? she'd wailed."I don't know, her daddy had said, and he looked so sad."It isn't fair!"No, it isn't, baby. Not by a mile. The world's only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your own little cave, that's one less fighter on the side of fair."

"I know because I read. Might I suggest you try it?"

"I know because I read...Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating."

"We're comfortable with women in certain roles but not comfortable with women expressing anger or fully accepting their power. The most daring question a woman can ask is, 'What do I want?'"

"There's no such thing as nothing. In every nothing, there's a something. In fact, there could be everything!"

"For dreams, too, are ghosts, desires chased in sleep, gone by morning."

"Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended to with vigilance, else it dies out."

"Wow, I miss Latin. So much fun - all those exciting verbs that don't come unit the end of the sentence. It's like a movie trailer for language."

"As a journalist, I am compelled to know the answers.""As a girl, I am compelled to protect what's left of my manicure," Petra said."

"I change the world, the world changes me."

"You can never know about about your own destiny: are the people you meet there to play a part on your oun destiny, or do you exist just to play a role in theirs?"

"There's an -or- in -whore- because you always have a choice to respect your body and say no."

"We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion trying to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time."

"Sometimes I just want to go in a room and break things and scream. Like, it's so much pressure all the time and if you get upset or angry, people say, 'Are you on the rag of something?' And it's like I want to say, 'No. I'm just pissed off right now. Can't I just be pissed off? How come that's not okay for me?' Like my dad will say, 'I can't talk to you when you're hysterical.' And I'm totally not being hysterical! I'm just mad. And he's the one losing it. But then I feel embarrassed anyway. So I slap on that smile and pretend everything's okay even though it's not."

"Because 'You're perfect just the way you are,' is what your guidance counselor says. And she's an alcoholic."

"Brought to you by The Corporation: In your homes and in your pants."

"I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living."

"It's over, her mind whispered. There's still hope, her heart insisted."

"I do have to wonder what sort of childhood the Grimm brothers endured. They are not a merry bunch of storytellers, what with their children roasted by witches, maidens poisoned by old crones, and whatnot."

"Beliefs converge and become something new all the time."

"Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary."

"May I suggest that you all read? And often. Believe me, it's nice to have something to talk about other than the weather and the Queen's health. Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating."

"I don't know why I feel so wounded with Kartik's obvious infatuation with Pippa. There's no romance between us. There's nothing that tethers us but this dark secret neither of us wants. It's not Kartik's longing that hurts. It's my own. It's knowing that I'll never have what she has--a beauty so powerful it brings things to you. I fear I will always have to chase things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for."

"I will never, ever drink whiskey again. From now on, it's strictly sherry."

"Sexuality is not meant to be this way - an honest, consensual expression in which a girl might take an active role when she feels good and ready and not one minute before. No. Sexual desire is meant to sell soap. And cars. And beer. And religion."

"Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't know yet what power feels like. But this is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us."

"Might. Is there any opiate more powerful than that word?"

"The wind has shifted to the East. A storm isn't far off. I can smell the moisture in the air, a fetid, living thing. Isolated drops fall, licking at my hands, my face, my dress. The quests squawk in surprise, turn their palms up to the sky as if questioning it, and dash for cover."

"America had invented itself. It continued to invent itself as it went along. Sometimes its virtues made it the envy of the world. Sometimes it betrayed the very heart of its ideals. Sometimes the people dispensed with what was difficult or inconvenient to acknowledge. So the good people maintained the illusion of democracy and wrote another hymn to America. They sang loud enough to drown out dissent. They sang loud enough to overpower their own doubts. There were no plaques to commemorate mistakes. But the past didn't forget. History was haunted by the ghosts of buried crimes, which required period exorcisms of truth. Actions had consequences."

"You set fire to my house, killed my family, and ate my dog. But steal my boyfriend? That's a step too far."

"Centuries of fighting, and for what? I say. "Today it ends. I can't live in fear any longer. I've cursed this power. I've both enjoyed and misused it. And I've hidden it away. Now I must try to wield it correctly, to marry it to a purpose and hope that is enough."

"I love you for who you are, not who the world thinks you should be."

"I'm sorry, Gemma. But we can't live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you."

"But if we are to remain a great empire, we must have a greater understanding of the hearts and minds of others."

"What Hamlet suffers from is a lack of zombies. Let us say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up-Ho-HO! Now you've got something that stirs the, um, something that stirs things that are stirrable. BOOM! A pack of ravenous flesh-eaters breaks open their heads and sucks out their eyeballs. No need for iambic pentameter because they are grunting, groaning annihilators of humanity with no time for meter. You're not asleep in the back of English class anymore, are you? This is what I'm talking about. Zombies. Learn it, live it, love it."

"We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be."

"Because the pure girls get rescued." Mary Lou felt something she didn't let herself feel often. She was well and truly pissed off. "Why do girls have to be all pure and innocent and good? Why don't guys have to be?"

"Memphis found his smile. 'You know me, sir. I don't wear worry."

"Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Felicity and Ann hunched over their ornaments as if they were fascinating relics from an archaeological dig. I note that their shoulders are trembling, and I realize that they are fighting laughter over my terrible plight. There's friendship for you."

"No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We're all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they'd like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance.A fissure forms in the vessel. I'm cracking open."

"Miss New Mexico stared, dumbfounded. "Stand out? Stand out? I have a freaking tray stuck in my forehead!" She broke into fresh sobs.Taylor clapped for attention. "Miss New Mexico, let's not get all down in the bummer basement where the creepy things live. There are people in heathen China who don't even have airline trays. We have a lot to be grateful for."

"Robot. Is. Sad. Because silly bitch. Will. Not. Dance."

"She shrieks above the din. "If you wish a battle, I shall give it. I am the last of my kind. I shall not lie down without a fight."