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.

The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.

You must hurt, or be hurt.

Music, I think, he makes me feel like music

Everywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of the same bright white flame.

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.

The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.