And this, really, is the story-within-the-story, because if you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the world will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light. But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.

Black is too morbid; red will set them on edge; pink is too juvenile; orange is freakish

Every choice is limited. That's life.

When you love someone, when you care for someone, you have to do it through the good and the bad. Not just when you're happy and it's easy.

We're killers, all of us: We kill our lives, our past selves, the things that mattered. We bury them under slogans and excuses.

I screamed until my voice dried up in my throat. We all did. All of us in Ward Six, all of us forgotten, left to rot.

For a second I feel a rush of sadness: for the horizons that vanish behind us, for the people we leave behind, the tiny-doll selves that get stored away and ultimately buried.