The beauty of dystopia is that it lets us vicariously experience future worlds - but we still have the power to change our own.

Writing, painting, singing -- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.

In a story, you can turn to the front and begin again and everyone lives once more. That doesn't work in real life. And I love my real people the most.

Being a teen is past for me. Worrying about the world and my place in it is not.

We could have been happy. I know that, and it is perhaps the hardest thing to know.

Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that.

Now that I've found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night?