Alex loved books. He was the one who first introduced me to poetry. That's another reason I can't read anymore.

I cry for everything I abandoned and because I, too, have been left behind -- by Alex, by my mom, by time that has cut through our worlds and separated us.

That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.

I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.

This is the world we live in, a world of safety and happiness and order, a world without love. A world where children crack their heads on stone fireplaces and nearly gnaw off their tongues and the parents are concerned. Not heartbroken, frantic, desperate. Concerned, as they are when you fail mathematics, as they are when they are late to pay their taxes.

I feel like I'm playing some giant video game, or trying to solve a really complicated math equation. 'One girl is trying to avoid forty raiding parties of between fifteen to twenty people each, spread out across a radius of seven miles. If she has to make it 2.7 miles through the center, what is the probablitiy she will wake up tomorrow morning in a jail cell? Please feel free to round pi to 3.14'.

That’s what you do for family. Anything.