I'm so tired after dinner I fall asleep with my clothes on, almost as soon as my head hits the pillow, and so I forget to ask God, in my prayers, to keep me from waking up.

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

Fear. Blame. Don't forget. Mom. I love you. -Lauren Oliver, Delerium

It's funny, isn't it? When you are young you just want to be old, and then later you wish you could go back to being a kid.

Most things, even the greatest movements on earth, have their beginnings in something small. An earthquake that shatters a city might begin with a tremble, a breath. Music begins with a vibration . . . And God created the whole universe from an atom no bigger than a thought.

Of all the systems of the body - neurological, cognitive, special, sensory - the cardiological system is the most sensitive and easily disturbed. The role of society must be to shelter these systems from infection and decay, or else the future of the human race is at stake. Like a summer fruit that is protected from insect invasion, bruising, and rot by the whole mechanism of modern farming; so must we protect the heart.

Summer explodes into Portland. In early June the heat was there but not the color--the green were still pale and tentative, the morning had a biting coolness--but by the last week of school everything is Technicolor and splash, outrageous blue skies and purple thunderstorms and ink-black night skies and red flowers as brights as spots of blood.