“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.”

“Lucian's father had warned him to fear idle men. Without the pride gained from a good day's work, they were left to their vices and the doubts that crowded their head. Their hatred. Their envy.”

“She was wearing her fuzzy pink hat and she was happy, which was so obnoxious. She'd become one of those people who waltzed through life without so much as a split end, and I was still one of those ...”

“We may be just a drop in the ocean, but even the ocean envies the depth of our love.”

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

“This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.”