We can never understand. We can only try, fumbling our way through the tunneled places, reaching for light.

But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.

Feelings aren't forever. Time waits for no one, but progress waits for man to enact it.

I’ve always hated being looked at.

Fourth period I have "life skills", which is what they call gym when you're old enough to be offended by forced physical activity (Elody thinks they should call it slavery instead, for accuracy).

it occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him--his past, his role in the resistance, what his life was like in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

As soon as I look up, his eyes click onto my face. The breath whooshes out of my body and everything freezes for a second, as though I’m looking at him through my camera lens, zoomed in all the way, the world pausing for that tiny span of time between the opening and closing of the shutter.