I didn't walk over and talk to him, though, not then. If I needed the time for a tree branch to become just a tree branch again and the wind to become just the wind, then a boy, most of all, needed some time to be only a boy.

I could forget that part, but it had to have been true.

We can get so wrapped up in our own misconceptions that we miss the simple beauty of the truth.

If time heals all wounds, and a book can hold a person's entire life, then you can speed up the process with a pulp time warp.

In the middle of the night I am awakened by a sound. I sit up abruptly in bed. I hear it again. It's music. Wait, it sounds like the ice cream man, in our house. Is this some kind of twisted nightmare? The flipping ice cream man, breaking in to chop us all up in our beds to the tune of 'Zippity Do Dah'?... My heart slows. I remember. There is no psycho ice cream man here. It is just our new musical soap dispenser.

I was like a chocolate in a box, looking well behaved and perfect in place, all the while harboring a secret center.

she wonders if we feel more regret for the things we do or for the things we didn't do