“Much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.”

“She was simply Asha, a woman on her own. Had the situation been otherwise, she might not have come to know her own brain.”

“One of his private vanities was that all the garbage sorting had endowed his hands with killing strengththat he could chop a brick in half like Bruce Lee. So lets get a brick, replied a girl with w...”

“Zehrunisa didnt know Abduls age herself. Seventeen was what shed said before the burning, when people asked her, but he could have been twenty-seven, for all she knew. You didnt keep track of a chi...”

“I've said it before and I'll say it again: Never trust anyone who tells you how people come to trust him.”

“But something he'd come to realize on the roof, leaning out, thinking about what would happen if he leaned too far, was that a boy's life could still matter to himself.”

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with trave...”

“I let out a laugh that sounded more like the yip of a startled poodle. "Superp-powers? I wish. My powers aren't winning me a slot on the Cartoon Network anytime soon... except as a comic relief. Gh...”

“To be haunted is to glimpse a truth that might best be hidden.”

“But people had forgotten there was a day in the not too distant past when theyd not seen or heard of bombings, and suicide vests, and snipers. Alicia, though, had not forgotten.”

“Every morningI wake up with the newsof bloodshed.I feel my body,desperate to know whetherIm still alive.”

“But people had forgotten there was a day in the not too distant past when they’d not seen or heard of bombings, and suicide vests, and snipers. Alicia, though, had not forgotten.”