Lindy West articulates points I've tried and failed to explain, and she does so in a funny and accessible way.

Lucy is occasionally a little too astute for a 15 year old and I'm not sure I get the whole "this is a letter to Linh" thing. But I love books about private schools, and this one is no exception. Alice Pung does a great job of capturing adolescent cruelty.

"I don't know if what we have here is what Plato meant by The Good Life. But it's a good life."

A lot of the imagery in this book reminded me of the area my grandparents live--the countryside littered with abandoned school buses, the family farms that got bought by an industrial operation. It made the crime that much more disturbing.

"May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful."

"Insolence, ignorance, ignoble, Chernobyl."