If singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing.

I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It's hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside you like a stone.

...the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. This is half the reason for the cure: It clean-sweeps; it makes the past, and all its pain, distant, like the barest impression on sparkling glass.

I will make a pact with you: I will do it if you will do it, always and forever. Take down the walls.

My stomach gets that hollowed-out feeling. It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart.

The reason you can never go home again isn't necessarily that places change, but people do. So nothing ever looks the same.

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