Fifteen minutes later, Betsy came thundering down the stairs. "I'm going to the mall with Sierra to see a movie." Michael leaned forward, switched off the television. "Can you please rephrase that in the form of a question?" "Sure. Can I have some money?

It's not intentions that matter. It's actions. We are what we do and say, not what we intend to.

She used to tell me that she couldn't feel the sunlight anymore, not even when she was standing in it, not even when it was hot on her cheeks

Girls like you can't understand," Julia said, and it was true. Ellie had been popular. She didn't know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime.

....both had learned that everything could change in an instant, and that the heartfelt vows of people in love were fragile words that, once shattered, could cut so deeply you'd bleed forever.

Nothing was easier to shatter than the fragile shield of an idealist.

Time goes too quickly. This is the advice that my mother should have given me from her hospital bed. Instead of vague, unknowable quips like "Be careful what you wish for," she should have told me time slides away on a hillside of loose shale and takes everything in its path - dreams, opportunities, hopes. And youth. It takes that fastest of all.