The silence wasn't like the ones I'd known lately, though: it wasn't empty as much as chosen. There's a entirely different feel to quiet when you're with some-one else, and at any moment it could be broken. Like the difference between a pause and an ending.

It shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder ― or impossible ― to lose.

There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn't sure I had it in me to keep looking back.

There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can ever truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.

It was hard to remember what the yard had looked like even twelve hours before, undisturbed and pristine. Like it takes so little to change something, but to make you forget the way it once was, as well.

I was so scared about being discovered, but nobody came. Nobody heard. In my own ears, though, my sobs sounded primal and scary, like something I would have turned off if I'd been able to.

I always tried to imagine what it would be like to open your door to find something you had given up on. Maybe it had seen places you never had, been rerouted and passed through so many strange hands, but still somehow found its way back to you, all before the day even began.