It's the time of the night I like best, when most people are asleep and it feels like the world belongs completely to my friends and me, as though nothing exists apart from out little circle: everywhere else is darkness and quiet.

willing me to understand: that people should be sacrificed to causes, that beauty can be built on the backs of the dead.

Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go. Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness.

The tunnels may be long, and twisted, and dark; but you are supposed to go through them.

Most people don't want to be saved. Besides, if you keep bailing everybody out, they'll never learn to paddle on their own.

She liked that word: we. It sounded warm and open, like a hug.

The first one, we’ll name Blue.