You're a wizard," I snapped. "Can't you just use magic to make your own food?" "Ah, yes," he retorted. "Because mud pies are so very delicious and the wind fills empty stomachs quite nicely.

Maybe nothing will ever change for us,” he said. “But don’t you want to be around just in case it does?

They were never scared of the kids who might die, or the empty spaces they would leave behind. They were afraid of us-the ones who lived.

Sometimes you're the one speeding along in a panic, doing too much, not paying attention, wrecking things you don't mean to. And sometimes life just happens to you, and you can't dodge it. It crashes into you because it wants to see what you're made of.

Oh, I'm sorry," Chubs said, 'apparently the middle of my sentence interrupted the beginning of yours. Do continue.

You get a good review, and it’s like crack. You need another hit. And another. And another. I know authors are like Tinkerbell and generally need applause to survive, but it’s a slippery slope.

Dreaming led to disappointment, and disappointment to a kind of depressed funk that wasn’t easy to shake. Better to stay in the gray than get eaten by the dark.