He'd stopped trying to bring her back. She only came back when she felt like it anyway, in dreams and lies and broken-down deja-vu.

I'm afraid," Professor Piper said, "afraid that you're never going to discover what you're truly capable of. That you won't get to see-that I won't get to see-any of the wonder that's inside of you.

What are the chances you’d ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away? The math seemed impossible.

But it’s up to us …’ he said softly. ‘It’s up to us not to lose this

I know what it’s like to be distracted. To seek out distractions. To exhaust yourself doing every other little thing rather than face a blank page

it’s like swimming upstream. Or … falling down a cliff and grabbing at branches, trying to invent the branches as I fall.

But you're so helpless sometimes. It's like watching a kitten with its head trapped in a Kleenex box.