Hey," says Hayden, "I'm Switzerland; neutral as can be, and also with great chocolate." "Get lost," Roland tells him. "Already am." And Hayden strolls away.

Once in a while our school has half days, and the teachers spend the afternoon 'in service,' which I think must be a group therapy for having to deal with us.

How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?" "They do it all the time," says Hayden. "That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.

Leadership is about keeping toilets flushing," the Admiral once said. "Unless you're on the battlefront. Then it's about staying alive. Neither are pleasant.

When it comes to such open-heart reflection, I'm a firm believer in the observer effect, which states that anything you try to observe is automatically changed by the mere fact that you're looking at it. The way I see it, if you try to study your emotions on a microscopic level, the best you can do is understand how it feels to hold the magnifying glass.

Love, Allie concluded, wasn't blind, it simply saw alternate dimensions.

He also keeps his silence when Bible passages become shredded to justify unwinding, and kids start to see the face of God in the fragments.