you have to understand. i wasn't just thinking of me. i was thinking of her, too.

I've learned to get really good at this - say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act like I'm listening when I'm not, pretend to be calm and happy when I'm really freaking out. It's one of the skills you perfect as you get older

A string of bright white buildinh, glistening like teeth over the slurping mouth of the ocean.

That’s what made it so frightening to the lawmakers: Love obeys no laws other than its own.

The priests and the scientists are right about one thing: At our heart, at our base, we are no better than animals.

That was what her parents did not understand—and had never understood—about stories. Liza told herself storied as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories.

Because if it weren’t for me, Lena and Alex would never have been caught at all. I told on them. I was jealous.