Please, do not leave me, Will Henry. I would not survive it. You were nearly right. What Mr. Kendall was, I am always on the brink of becoming. And you - I do not pretend to know how or even why - but you pull me back from the precipice. You are the one... You are the one thing that keeps me Human.

How oft do they rescue or ruin us, through whimsy or design or a combination of both, the adults to whom we entrust our care!

We’re here, and then we’re gone, and it’s not about the time we’re here, but what we do with the time.

We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece.

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.

When the moment comes to stop running from your past, to turn around and face the thing you thought you could not face--the moment when your life teeters between giving up and getting up--when that moment comes, and it always comes, if you can't get up and you can't give up either, here's what you do: Crawl.

I am a shark, Cassie," he says slowly, drawing the words out, as if he might be speaking to me for the last time. Looking into my eyes with tears in his, as if he's seeing me for the last time. "A shark who dreamed he was a man.