And when we are with Alex, I might as well not be there. They speak in a language of whispers and giggles and secrets; their words are like a fairy-tale tangle of thorns, which place a wall between us.

If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit. This is the way the world is made now.

Grief is like sinking, like being buried.

And this, really, is the story-within-the-story, because if you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the world will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light. But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.

The sparrows jumped before they knew how to fly, and they learned to fly only because they had jumped.

You must hurt, or be hurt.

A room full of words that are nearly the truth but not quite, each note fluttering off the steam of its rose like a broken butterfly wing.