You don't make a friend," Jacob said with a scowl. "It's not like they come with directions like you'd find on a box of macaroni and cheese.

I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet.

The act of reading is a partnership. The author builds a house, but the reader makes it a home.

And in general, the residents of the town wondered why they all felt hollow just beneath the throat, the result of missing something they had never been able to name in the first place.

You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don't want to say it out loud-for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there's a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together-huddle and circle our wagons-and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? And what if, God forbid, they got it wrong?

I try really hard to ask people to take a look at their bookshelves. Are there female writers on it? Gay writers? Writers of color? There should be.

is it like this every night, while we're asleep?