To tell you the truth I love Sam. It's not a movie kind of love either. I just look at her sometimes and I think she is the prettiest and nicest person in the whole world.

When we were all getting ready to leave, I walked up to my grandfather and gave him a hug and kiss on the cheek. He wiped my lip print off with his palm and gave me a look. He doesn't like the boys in the family to touch him. But I'm very glad that I did it anyway in case he dies. I never got to do that with my Aunt Helen.

It's just hard to see a friend hurt this much. Especially when you can't do anything except 'be there.' I just want to make him stop hurting, but I can't. So I just follow him around whenever he wants to show me his world.

Part of the reason I wrote the book was I wanted to understand for myself why such good people let themselves get treated so badly.

So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.

The thing is some girls think they can actually change guys

Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.