Think of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That’s the earth. Why it goes around. We’re the rocks. And what happens to us—the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse—why, that’s just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.

I have a lot of money.

This deluded little rube who really thought the future would be any better. If you just worked hard enough. If you just learned enough. Ran fast enough. Everything would turn out right, and your life would amount to something.

You can't be beautiful," Brandy says about a thousand times, "until you feel beautiful.

There's a terrible dark joy when the only person who knows all your secrets is finally dead.

We have pain and hate and love and joy and war in the world because we want them.

The world will always punish the few people with special talents the rest of us don’t recognize as real.