It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.

Some girls have to go to college to discover what they are good at; some are born doing what they must without even truly knowing why. I felt a hole in my heart shaped like a dark door I needed to guard.

Oh, quit that. Blushing is for virgins and Christians.

...her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat.

I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God?

Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.

Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You'll never wish you'd held back a little more.