Po flickered. "Thank you?" it repeated. "What is that?" Liesl thought. "It means, You were wonderful," she said. "It means, I couldn't have done it without you.

It was as though the darkness was a sheet of raw cookie dough and someone had just taken a cookie cutter and made a child-sized shape out of it.

But that's the problem with love - it acts on you, works through you, resists your attempts to control.

You must hurt, or be hurt.

Raven jerks and stiffens. For a second, I think she is only surprised: Her mouth goes round, her eyes wide. Then she begins teetering backward, and I know that she is dead. Falling, falling, falling . . .

But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.

For the first time in my life I actually feel sorry for Carol. I'm only seventeen years old, and I already know something she doesn't know: I know that life isn't life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point- the only point- is to find things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.