I could hardly get a boy to look at me. All right, they'd look, they'd even take me out, but no one asked for a second date. I was too nasty, a real wise guy, and all the boys could tell what my rotten disposition was. Deep down, I wanted a commitment with a capital C. To get anywhere with me, a boy would have to sign his undying loyalty with his own blood.

What you dream, you can grow. Someone told me that, but I didn't believe it. I said I had nothing and that people with nothing are unable to dream. But I was wrong.

My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel.

He'd thought he was lost, but now he recognized that eternity was around him, like salt from a shaker or stars in the sky.

That is how you know you've left childhood behind-when you wish for time to go backward.

I don't think I make much of a distinction between the 'real' and the 'fantastic.' They both seem to be threads in the same cloth as far as I'm concerned.

Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.