What are you reading?" Owen asks. "Charlotte's Web," Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died." "You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending.

There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?

My heart was a little bit broken, but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn't show too much.

Daddy always said that an option that you know to have a bad outcome is only a fool's option, i.e., not an option at all. And I liked to think that Daddy hadn't raised a fool.

Oh, all stories are the same, aren't they? Men and women fall in love or out of love. People are born; people die. It al ends happily or it all ends sadly, and the difference matters only to the people involved.

It was funny how dad was more honest in a book that anyone in the world could pick up and read than he could be talking to me. Or maybe it was sad. One or the other. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

I wondered if the person who really loves you is the person who knows all your stories, the person who WANTS to know all your stories.