This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone...a security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always feel its presence like a swelling secret stone, and that way when she let go of the rage, she would not feel nearly as empty.

It took me a lifetime to realizethings don't get lost if they don't have value- you don't miss what you don't care about.

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

It's certainly my honor to be able to, hopefully, change the world a tiny bit, one mind at a time.

I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone, it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere.

A girl who is thirteen-which is hard, and difficult, and beautiful, and painful, and exhilarating.

Polar north can't get away from a magnet; the magnet finds it, no matter what.