Making lists of reasons was sometimes a good way to figure things out.

Then I went home to continue my life, which had changed a little, as lives do every day, inching by microspecks forward toward whatever surprises are coming next.

For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo.

It's hard to give up the being together with someone.

Evil can do anything, for a price.

The community of the Giver had achieved at such great price. A community without danger or pain. But also, a community without music, color or art. And books.

When I create characters, I create a world to inhabit and they begin to feel very real for me. I don't belong in a psych ward, I don't think, but they become very real, like my own family, and then I have to say goodbye, close the door, and work on other things.