Maura had decided sometime before Blue's birth that it was barbaric to order children about, and so Blue had grown up surrounded by imperative question marks.

at last no one decided And no one knocked And no one jumped up And no one opened And there stood no one And no one entered And no one said: welcome And no one answered: at last

It occurred to me that there was a story behind the scar -- maybe not as dramatic as the story of my wrists, but a story nonetheless -- and the fact that everyone had a story behind some mark on their inside or outside suddenly exhausted me, the gravity of all those untold pasts.

Okay, outside," the clerk said. "Conversation outside. Bye! Have a nice night!

Ronan Lynch lived with every sort of secret. His first secret was himself. He was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer. He was a warring star full of endless possibilities, but in the end, as he dreamt in the backseat on the way to the Barns that night, he created only this.

This is Rilke. I wish I had written it for you.

She attempted to turn again; I held on. I wasn't holding tight enough to keep her, but she wasn't pulling hard enough to get away.