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.

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.

The past hadn't been erased just because a new future had been handed it.

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.

You shouldn't imagine things that you haven't a shred of proof happened.

We are born knowing how to be just. And we die knowing we spent a lifetime pretending we didn't.

Confidence tends to minimize the magnitude of the choice.