I might have been eleven years old and a little socially immature, but I recognized a gauntlet being thrown down when I saw it, and I had no choice but to take it up.

Concert' doesn’t mean standing up like a target in front of thousands of strangers. It means coming together. It means harmony.

I think everything is happening all the time, but if you don't put yourself in the path of it, you miss it.

My first impulse is not to grab her or kiss her or yell at her. I simple want to touch her cheek, still flushed from the night's performance. I want to cut through the space that separates us, measured in feet-not miles, not continents, not years-and to take a callused finger to her face.

Sometimes you can't know until you know.

She's still beautiful. Not in an obvious Vanessa LeGrande or Byrn Shraeder kind of way. In a quiet way that's always been devastating to me.

If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?