It was like a dream you might have after death in which lost people came back to life, your friends loved you again no matter what you had done, and your failures were unaccountably forgiven.

Besides being asked why I write about young characters, I am often asked how I write about young characters. How do I throw myself across the chasm of full adulthood to relive that period? I guess I don’t, really. Age is not so much a feature of your character, as the spot where you stand for a pretty fleeting time on the arc of your life.

She knew whose love she doubted. It wasn't her parents' and it wasn't her friends: It was her own.

Try, reach, want, and you may fall. But even if you do, you might be okay anyway. If you don't try, you save nothing, because you might as well be dead.

Everyone is fragile. Everything beautiful is fragile

I'm dying with you before I'm living without you.

She was alive, and they were dead. She had to try to make her life big. As big as she could. She promised Bailey she would keep playing.