For a long time, I wasn’t sure if I liked sex. I liked everything that led up to it: the guessing, the tentative loaded interactions, the stilted conversation on the cold walks home, looking at myself in the mirror in someone else’s closed-sized bathroom… but sex itself was a mystery.
-- Lena (I paragraph Page 18)

Importance: This captures Lena’s obsession with and confusion about sex. It illustrates her immaturity. She was playing a game rather than just living, doing.

When someone shows you how little you mean to them and you keep coming back for more, before you know it you start to mean less to yourself.
-- Lena (I paragraph Page 58)

Importance: Lena captures the essence of self-worth. Her penchant for being attracted to “jerks” as she puts it was not leading to good self-esteem.

I have uttered the words ‘I love you’ to precisely four men, not including my father, uncle, and assorted platonic neurotics I go...
-- Lena (I paragraph Page 74)