Someday she will be saved, and the past and all its pain will be rendered as smoothly palatable as the food we spoon to our babies.

My boyfriend's an idiot," I say as soon as he lurches away."A cute idiot," Ally corrects me."That's like saying 'a cute mutant.' Doesn't exist.

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.

i feel like a curtain has dropped away and i'm seeing people for who they really are, different, and sharp, and unknowable.

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

amazingly, i'd actually forgotten that i'm supposed to be plain. i'm so used to alex telling me i'm beautiful. i'm so used to feeling beautiful around him. a hollow opens up in my chest. this is what life will be like without him: everything will become ordinary again. i'll become ordinary again.

Additionally, Liesl and Po is the embodiment of what writing has always been for me at its purest and most basic--not a paycheck, certainly; not an idea, even; and not an escape. Actually, it is the opposite of an escape; it is a way back in, a way to enter and make sense of a world that occasionally seems harsh and terrible and mystifying. (From the "Author's Note" at the end).