"I elbow my way through the mass of people to get to my locker because there's something immensely satisfying about the toughest part of my arm connecting with the softest part of everyone else."

"A terrified-looking bystander, a nerdy man in a sweater, calls the police and stammers into the phone: 'A huge group of people are fighting and there's pepper spray and superheroes and I don't know."

"Leah' Olivia says quietly, 'if you point at me again I'm going to break that manicured finger right off your hand. Now turn around and smile, your daughter is waking up."

"I'm very quiet. In the beginning, my brother would play the piano, and I would sing, because that's what my mom and dad did. And then along the way, somebody teased me for even thinking that I could get up there. That stayed with me, and I became very shy."

"I figure this current era of history is the one with the best chance of quality of life for a black, female, disabled, middle-aged, queer person who's most comfortable not fitting in. The odds still aren't great, mind you. But I'll take my chances with the 21st century."

"Given their current circumstances, things would have to be very bad indeed for Tilly to think the situation had gotten worse. Sure, they were all trapped in orbit around an alien space station that periodically changed the rules of physics and had killed a bunch of them, but now they’d decided to start shooting each other too.Yes, very bad."

"And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan."

"Finding out how the rest of the world lives is a normal part of rumschpringe. I didn't think it was up to my father-or my bishop-to squash that kind of curiosity."

"And there you stand-Far away from the distant reality,Far away in my breathing dream,Far away in the traces of my livid eyes,Far away in my hostile fantasy."