"Nick loved a girl I was pretending to be. 'Cool girl.' Men always use that, don't they, as their defining compliment? She's a Cool Girl. Cool Girl is hot, Cool Girl is game, Cool Girl is fun, Cool Girl never gets angry at her man, she only smiles in a chagrin, loving manner, and then presents her mouth for fucking. She likes what he likes, so evidently he's a vinyl hipster who loves fetish manga. If he loves Girls Gone Wild, she's a mall babe who talks football and endures buffalo wings at Hooters. When I met Nick Dunne I knew he wanted Cool Girl, and for him, I'll admit, I was willing to try. I wax stripped my pussy raw. I drank canned beer watching Adam Sandler movies. I ate cold pizza and remained a size 2. I blew him, semi-regularly. I lived in the moment. I was fucking game. I can't say I didn't enjoy some of it. Nick teased out of me things I didn't know existed. A lightness. A humor. An ease. But I made him smarter, sharper. I inspired him to rise to my level. I forged the man of my dreams. We were happy pretending to be other people. We were the happiest couple we knew; and what's the point of being together if you're not the happiest? But Nick got lazy. He became someone I did not agree to marry. He actually expected me to love him unconditionally. Then he dragged me, penniless, to the navel of this great country, and found himself a newer, younger, bouncier Cool Girl. You think I'd let him destroy me and end up happier than ever? No fucking way. He doesn't get to win."

"The world is a devastated place, you must learn to protect your emotions if you wish to prevent matter with law and love for devastated you."

"Grandma said a long time ago, that Vietnamese people used to eat coconut frogs. Oh yeah. Coconut and frogs. They’d take a coconut and make a small cut and insert a tadpole, but then, a few weeks later, they’d open up the coconut to find a blind frog with white skin. And it’ll have the smoothest skin and the softest coconut flavored meat. For most of my life, I’ve been like one of those tadpoles. Growing up in this strange world that never seemed right, but trying my best to fit in, to grow into a frog. After spending time at the Firehouse, it hit me. Our parents wanted us to be perfect. They had an image of what perfect should be. But in the end, I don’t deserve to live in a coconut. No one does."