“Even as an adult, I am still looking for ways for her to win that fight. How can we not sill be rooting for the younger versions of ourselves as if they actually exist, playing catch-up in time? Who wouldn’t like to implant their current brains into a scenario from that past? SATs be damned, how about the insertion of a few eloquent turns of phrase when, for no discernible reason, Michael Gruzzman called me “baloney boobs” on the bus home for a whole year? At the time I could only fold my arms over my mild-mammaried chest and stare out the window, wishing I had the superhuman strength required to slide open one of those school-bus windows and push Michael Gruzzman out of it. Surely now I could at least eke out a “Shut it assclown.” Or match the boys in physical development jokes, quoting Truman Capote when he was asked to sign a man’s penis: “I couldn’t sign it, but perhaps I could initial it?”
Pgs. 142-3

“‘Is that like cartography?’ I asked, wondering if there was a use for [majoring in geography] anymore. I was under the impression that the world was kind of done, that we has accepted its parameters and moved on. Like ashtrays. Or ketchup. Or bricks. These things were about as good as they were going to get.”
Pg. 155

“When she performed some amusing kitten antic, they cooed the way Hollywood producers laugh–by saying “That’s funny” instead of actually laughing.”
Pg. 177