It comes with being sixteen," Mom said. "You teenagers, you go into a cocoon when you turn fifteen and don't come out for years." "So they become butterflies when they finally come out?" my little sister Christina asked. "No," Mom said. "They're still caterpillars, only now they're big fat caterpillars that smell.

Perhaps, thought Talon, there was a path in between. A way to shed their ignorance without losing their souls.

Whoever invented the spork should be killed.

Hope can be bruised and battered. It can be forced underground and even rendered unconscious, but hope cannot be killed.

Suddenly it was obvious to Connor why they don't teach it. Once education was restructured and corporatized, they didn't want kids knowing how close they came to toppling the government. They didn't want kids to know how much power they really had.

You have robbed me, and everyone here, of their purpose. That's not salvation, that's damnation.

You know that feeling you get when your leg falls asleep? Well, I suddenly had that feeling in my spine. Like termites were chewing through the marrow in my backbone.