Peter curled his hands into fists at his sides. 'Kiss me,' he said. She leaned towards him slowly, until her face was too close to be in focus. Her hair fell over Peter's shoulder like a curtain and her eyes closed. She smelled like autumn-like apple cider and slanting sun and the snap of the coming cold. He felt his heart scrambling, caught inside the confines of his own body. Josie's lips landed just on the edge of his, almost his cheek and not quite his mouth. 'I'm glad I wasn't stuck in here alone,' she said shyly, and he tasted the words, sweet as mint on her breath.

Hunger, she often tells me, has nothing to do with the belly and everything to do with the mind. What Mary really runs isn't a bakery, but a community.

It feels like a punch. Tears fill my eyes, and I wonder how I could be upset over losing something I never had.

There are always sides. There is always a winner and a loser. For every person who gets, there's someone who must give.

And the very act of living is a tide; at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded

You have to understand what you’re missing before you can really feel a loss.

And sometimes, he was less lucid. He'd run around his cell like a caged animal; he'd rock back and forth; he'd swing from topic to topic as if it was the only way to cross the jungle of his thoughts.