How many times would I throw this away before I realized it was what I had been looking for all along?

I wonder if what makes a family a family isn't doing everything right all the time but, instead, giving a second chance to the people you love who do things wrong.

Yes, she is." He looks at me, his face carved in pain. "She is dying, Sara. She will die, either tonight or tomorrow or maybe a year from now if we're really lucky. You heard what Dr. Chance said. Arsenic's not a cure. It just postpones what's coming." My eyes fill up with tears. "But I love her," I say, because that is reason enough.

When feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her eyes and expected the worst-but it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a different thing. A messier one, more complicated one. She hesitated, and then she kissed Patrick back, willing to concede that you might have to lose control before you could find what you'd been missing.

There's a problem with wounded birds, Cassie," Connor said. "Either they fly away from you one day, or else they never get better. They stay hurt no matter what you do.

The apple . . . came before Adam and Eve in the story of creation. It had to have been there at least three years because that's how long it takes for a new tree to bear fruit.

Or in other words, it's the substance you've got when you start that determines the outcome.