Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.

My heart broke all over again. I wanted my life back, my mama, but I knew I would never have that. The child I had been was gone with the child she had been. We were new people, and we didn't know each other anymore. I shook my head desperately.

I have wanted everything as a writer and a woman, but most of all a world changed utterly by my revelations.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.

... survival is the least of my desires.

He never said "Don't tell your mama." He never had to say it. I did not know how to tell anyone what I felt, what scared me and shamed me... (109)

Every kid I meet who's a reader has got something like that, their fantasy world. And science fiction is the best, especially for girls because it's the one place where you can do the forbidden.