“You save yourself or you remain unsaved.”

“She wasn't actually speaking to me, she was singing a kind of lullaby of talk. But, eventually, the music stopped. ”

“Outside the hospital, a young girl who was selling small bouquets of daffodils, their green stems tied with lavender ribbons. I watched as my mother bought out the girl's whole stock. Nurse Eliot, ...”

“There were also the Masters of Arcane Knowledge. Everyone begrudged their presence among the gifteds. These were the kids that could break down an engine and build it back again - no diagrams or in...”

“Oh sweetheart, do you really think if youseal it up, that the pain's gonna go away?”

“I could not imagine my youngest standing above her soiled grandmother in the wing chair and saying, "mother, let's kill her. "That's the only choice.”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches...”

“Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud...”

“The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripp...”

“There are those who travel but never really arrive. Those who visit a place but never know the people. Travel is so much more when you get closer to life and how it is lived here, wherever here may...”

“Do you know a better time than the present for igniting your dreams?”