There's much more. There's all that goes beyond – all ... that is Elsewhere – and all that goes back, and back, and back. I received all of those, when I was selected. And here in this room, all alone, I re-experience them again and again. It is how wisdom comes. And how we shape our future.

...now he saw the familiar wide river beside the path differently. He saw all of the light and color and history it contained and carried in its slow - moving water; and he knew that there was an Elsewhere from which it came, and an Elsewhere to which it was going

There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens.

People in the know say The Giver was the first young adult dystopian novel.

You will fail. Then they will kill you." - Vandara to Kira, following Kira's trial.

It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that sometimes the two are very close together.

I don't know what she is now. A stranger, mostly. It's as if she has become a part of a different world, one that doesn't include me anymore.