You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?

She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls’ hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.

But I'll tell you something else, too. Something I've learned, the hard way. I guess"—Gram laughed a little—"I'm the kind of person who has to learn things the hard way. You've got to hold on. Hold on to people. They can get away from you. It's not always going to be fun, but if you don't—hold on—then you lose them.

...When this map was made, there was only empty forest in the south," Gran told Birle."Not empty," Granda corrected her. "The forest is never empty.

All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often inspired.

You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?

The worst things weren't outside of you.