Dissecting a book was the same as making sense of life. You have to find a way to interpret life, or you'll go nuts.

We moved wordlessly from one room to another, from the room of the dead to the room where time lay in pages everywhere I looked.

When you only do what is expected of you, you never learn what you would've done had you chosen for yourself.

Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able to love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us.

When we trust someone, we believe what they tell us is true. We experience it as being true. It's not the experience itself that empowers us to believe it. It is the trust.

No one thinks much about their ability to breathe; they just do it. It's when a person can't breathe, that they suddenly realize they'd been doing something truly marvelous all along.

I used to think mercy meant showing kindness to someone who didn't deserve it, as if only the recipient defined the act. The girl in between has learned that mercy is defined by its giver. Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able to love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us.