What glitters may not be gold; and even wolves may smile; and fools will be led by promises to their deaths.

They haven't killed us yet," I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, over Rochester, over every fenced-in city in the whole country, and I will bomb and bomb and bomb, and watch all their buildings smoldering to dust, and all those people melting and bleeding into flame, and I will see how they like it. If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit. This is the way the world is made now.

Through wind, and tempest, storm, and rain; The calm shall be buried inside of me; A warm stone, heavy and dry; The root, the source, a weapon against pain

Raven jerks and stiffens. For a second, I think she is only surprised: Her mouth goes round, her eyes wide. Then she begins teetering backward, and I know that she is dead. Falling, falling, falling . . .

Sometimes I feel like she deserves a best friend who is just a little more special.

It won't matter if nobody ever thinks I'm pretty (although sometimes I wish, just for a second, that somebody would)

I don't understand how everything changes, how the layers of your life get buried. Impossible. At some point, at some time, we must all explode.