But it was like wearing a size five sneakers when your foot is a seven- you can get by for a few steps, and then you set down and pull off the shoes because it just plain much

You'd think someone who'd been to medical school would be able to hear through a stethoscope that somebody was empty inside.

Read a ton. Take a workshop course so you learn to give and get criticism.

Maybe knowing where you belong is not equal to knowing who you are.

When you are a kid you have your own language, and unlike French or Spanish or whatever you start learning in fourth grade, this one you are born with, and eventually lose...Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult...is only a slow sewing it shut.

Crazy girls did this, girls who walked like zombies through YA novels. But. Trixie felt the sting of the skin as it split, the sweet welling rise of blood. It hurt, though not as much as everything else idd.

Where you come from does matter -- but not nearly as much as where you are headed.