Those of us who frequent the band room have long suspected that Becca maintains her lovely figure by eating nothing but the souls of kittens and the dreams of impoverished children.

How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" In reality, "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" were probably not Simon Bolivar's last words (although he did, historically, say them). His last words may have been "Jose! Bring the luggage. They do not want us here." The significant source for "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" is also Alaska's source, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The General in his Labyrinth.

Language buries, but does not resurrect.

I didn't want to see them lower him into the ground in the spot he'd picked out with his dad, and I didn't want to see his parents sink to their knees in the dew-wet grass and moan in pain.

Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.

To find Margo Roth Spiegelman, you must become Margo Roth Spiegelman. And I had done many of the things she might have done: I had engineered a most unlikely prom coupling. I had quieted the hounds of caste warfare. I had come to feel comfortable inside the rat-infested haunted house where she did her best thinking. I had seen. I had listened. But I could not yet become the wounded person.

I tried--I swear I tried. But you didn't want to hear what I was saying, and I used that as an excuse to let it go on.