I saw the end of his life right there in that single moment. His pride, his decency, his secrets, his death.

Love ambushed you, it lay in wait, dormant for days or years. It was the red thread, the peach stone, the kiss, the forgiveness. It came after you, it escaped you, it was invisible, it was everything.

She didn't like being twelve. It felt like someplace between who she'd been and who she was about to be. It felt like no place at all.

Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.

Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside? At the library I couldn’t help but notice which patrons checked out the same books. They appeared to have nothing in common, but who could tell what a person was truly made of? The unknown, the riddle, the deepest truth. I noticed them all: the ones who’d lost their way, the ones who’d lived their lives in ashes, the ones who had to prove themselves, the ones who, like me, had lost the ability to feel.

Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.

In the darkest hour of winter, when the starlings had all flown away, Gretel Samuelson fell in love. It happened the way things are never supposed to happen in real life, like a sledgehammer, like a bolt from out of the blue. One minute she was a seventeen year-old senior in high school waiting for a Sicilian pizza to go; the next one she was someone whose whole world had exploded, leaving her adrift in the Milky Way, so far from earth she was walking on stars.