A second date always felt like an announcement at his age. And he never felt ready for the announcement.

— Megan Abbott

Because they do burn leaves here, the older folks do, and I remember now that I love it and always have. The way fall feels at night because of it, because of the crackling sound and walking around the sidewalks, like when you’re a kid, and kicking those soft piles, and seeing smoke from backyards and Mr. Gilstrap standing over the metal drum with the holes in the top, the sparking embers at his feet.

— Megan Abbott

Did you ever look out in that dark and fucked-up world out there and think, how do I let my daughter out into that? And how do I stop her? And the things you can’t stop because you’re … because-

— Megan Abbott

If it hadn't been what it was, it would've been beautiful.

— Megan Abbott

I still feel like teenage girls are not taken seriously by the culture at large, especially not their darker or more complicated feelings—of aggression, desire, ambition. To me, these feelings and drives are so fundamental to girlhood and to womanhood, and I love exploring them. And trying to give voice to them as best I can. I think women are always trying to figure out their own adolescence. We never stop.

— Megan Abbott

It is not aloofness, superiority. It’s a protection. Who in this ravaged battlefield doesn’t want to gather close her comrades?

— Megan Abbott

It is simple as this: she has a complicated life and her clothes can't help but show it. It is all part of her unique disheveled glamour.

— Megan Abbott

...like my own granddad used to say, if you get down to the nub of it, people don't change. That's not true, Katie thought. Not at all. Everyone changed, all the time. That was what was so hard.

— Megan Abbott

Love is a kind of killing, Add," she says. "Don't you know that?

— Megan Abbott

People will always try to scare you into things. Scare you away from things. Scare you into not wanting things you can't help wanting. You can't be afraid.

— Megan Abbott