We pretend when we want to forget things are dangerous,’ she thought, though she immediately failed to apply this concept to herself or reflect upon why she was pretending to be super taken with Byron when she wasn’t.”
-- Hazel (chapter 3)

Importance: This quote is one of the first insights the reader is given into how Hazel’s uniquely imaginative intelligence continually fails to protect her in life. Hazel has a strange, wandering stream of consciousness that is highly perceptive of everything going on around her, yet somehow she neglects to act when faced with clear warning signs. She is self-aware, but rooted firmly in her ways, and this will ultimately lead her down a dangerous path.

If she’d been smart enough to say, ‘Your money is tempting but wow are you strange; I am too but let me just add that something does not feel right here. Something feels aggressively odd...
-- Hazel (chapter 5)