I am a friend. I have in my possession two thousand assorted buttons, eight hundred keys, and only one friend. Perhaps it is not something you can understand. I have not often been one before. I will be now.

Lena's hair was sticking out in about fifteen directions, and her eyes were all small and puffy from crying. So this was what girls looked like in the morning. I had never seen one, not up close.

DEMON MATH What is JUST in a world you've ripped in two as if there could be a half for me a half for you what is FAIR when there is nothing left to share what is YOURS when your pain is mine to bear this sad math is mine this mad path is mine subtract they say don't cry back to the desk try forget addition multiply and i reply this is why remainders hate division.

I wouldn't know where to start." "He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to." "Thoreau?" "Harry Emerson Fosdick.

The beginning of a book is always the hardest part for me. I'm a Chapter 3 kind of writer, which means I naturally start at Chapter 3.

I didn't want to choose one world. I wanted to be part of both. I didn't want to see only one side of the sky. I wanted to see it all.

It wasn't that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious. It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn't.