This was what true fear was--that you could never know other people, not completely. That you were always just guessing blind.

One of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your private world - your little carved-out sphere - is twisting and morphing, even breaking apart.

it's weird how much people change. for example, when i was a kid i loved all of these things..and over time all of them just fell away, one after another, replaced by friends and IMing and cell phones and boys and clothes. it's kind of sad, if you think about it. like there's no continuity in people at all. like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you're no longer a kid but a "young adult," and after that you're a totally different person. maybe even a less happy person. maybe even a worse one.

That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.

Time jumps. It leaps. It pours away like water through fingers.

Happiness is found when no one is looking

I am growing stronger. I am a stone being excavated by the slow passage of water; I am wood charred by a fire.