(The raindrops) played across the coast all through the night, until the soft new day shrugged itself awake, tried on amethyst and lavender for a while, and finally decided on pale yellow.

You know, when someone has been crying, something gets left in the air. It's not something you can see or smell, or feel. Or draw. But it's there.

Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches.

Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sound you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race--and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love. Then put all those together.

I saw my town as if I had just arrived. It was as if I was waking up. You see houses and buildings every day, and you walk by them on your way to something else, and you hardly see. You hardly notice they're even there, mostly because there's something else going on right in front of your face, But when the town itself becomes the thing that is going on right in front of your face, it all changes, and you're not just looking at a house, but at what's happened in that house before you were born.

Sometimes--and I know it doesn't last for anything more than a second--sometimes there can be perfect understanding between two people who can't stand each other. He smiled, and I smiled, and we put the Timex watches on, and we watched the seconds flit by.

Maybe this happens to you every day, but I think it was the first time I could hardly wait to show something that I'd done to someone who would care besides my mother. You know how that feels?