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.

You will be faced, now, with pain of a magnitude that none of us here can comprehend because it is beyond our experience. The Receiver himself was not able to describe it, only to remind us that you would be faced with it, that you would need immense courage.

For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.

What's important is the preparation for adult life, and the training you'll receive in your Assignment.

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.

She fell asleep, and it was a sleep as thin as the night clouds, dotted with dreams that came and went like the stars.

I'm not terribly conversant with children's literature in general. I tend to read books for adults, being an adult.