Sometimes I think the human heart is just a simple shelf. There is only so much you can pile onto it before something falls off an edge and you are left to pick up the pieces.

Joseph Obomsawin, the elder I lived with there, says that those who turn to animals do so because humans have let them down.

let me tell you what happens when you cook down the syrup of loss over the open fire of sorrow: it solidfies into something wlaw. not grief, like you'd expect, or even regret. no, it gets thick as paste, black as ash; yet it isn't until you dip a finger in and feel that sharp taste dissolving on your tounge that you realize this is angel in its purest form, unrefined; a substance to be weighed and measyred and spread.

I’m gonna miss you,” Brianna says. “I’m gonna miss you too, baby,” Angelo murmurs. For Pete’s sake. It’s not like she’s leaving on a trip around the world. She’s only headed to homeroom.

I can get 400 pages down the road and still not know the answer. What I do know is that I have really examined every facet of the situation, and I may not have changed my opinion but I have definitely forced myself to explore why it's my opinion.

but if I've learned anything, it's that we don't know half of what we think we do. And we know ourselves least of all.

She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.