“The choir sang and the old man sang and Drake couldn't sing, and suddenly he began to cry because of the music, because of the sound of the boys' voices, because of what they might turn into.”

“The principles of catching rumours were, in fact, similar to the principals of catching dreams, but because rumour was weightier, the catcher had to be positioned closer to the ground. Rumour flew ...”

“And they held on tight to that beautiful silent moment before words transported them to the realm of the ordinary, to the realm of the inarticulate and mundane.”

“Those left behind prayed constantly for peace but prayers came back with Return to Sender stamped all over them. Only the roll call of the dead grew.”

“Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we're still here.”

“I'd been feeling like this for a while, the continual looking back, the stuckness of it all. I blamed it on the coming New Year, only four and a half months away, when the clocks would read zero an...”

“In a universe where all life is in movement, where ever fact seen in perspective is totally engaging, we impose stillness on lively young bodies, distort reality to dullness, make action drudgery. ...”

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter. ”

“When you're a kid all you know is that your dad puts on his suit or overalls and vanishes from your life until nightfall. Sometimes my pops came back exhausted and scarlet-eyed, as if he'd been eng...”

“I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about i...”

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be r...”

“I walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are goin...”

“I don't care what you say to me. I care what you share with me.”

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone wont either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are...”

“Never knew what a friendship was, Never knew how to really love, You can't be what I need you to, & I don't know why I fuck with you”