I'm a girl who has been tamping down her emotions and keeping them tightly guarded her whole life. And that works really well for me. [...] And now I felt like my shell had a dangerous crack in it. Without much more effort on his part, it would split wide open and my enormous river of emotions would gush out - the bad and the good. It was pretty much the scariest thing I'd ever thought of.

Just in case you thought elephants were all sweetness, I can attest to the fact that this one had the time of her life scaring the bejeezus out of those dudes.

You have a memory chip that small implanted in you,” he verified. I nodded, guessing this was somewhat worse than having cooties.

maybe, beauty, true beauty, is so overwhelming, it goes straight to our hearts.maybe it makes us feel emotions that are locked away inside

Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn't mean that all stories have to, even if that's what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Review. In fact, it's a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from another.

Sundown had bloodied the horizon over the uneven rooftops of South Boston. Birds were perched on every roof and seemed to be watching the girl walking slowly below. - Cradle and All

Knowledge is a terrible burden. It may help you, but it might also destroy you.