The cruelty of fate is that I must travel with the people I hate when the people I love are dead behind me.

Learning how to think in the midst of fear is a lesson that everyone needs to learn.

Politeness is deception in pretty packaging.

It doesn't prove anything except that you're bullying us. Which, as I recall, is a sign of cowardice.

The first step to loving someone else is to recognize the evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them.

I can’t answer either question. But the look she gives me reminds me of the look in the attack dog’s eyes in the aptitude test – a vicious, predatory stare. She wants to rip me to pieces. I can’t lie down in submission now. I have become an attack dog too.

At home I used to spend calm, pleasant nights with my family. My mother knit scarves for the neighborhood kids. My father helped Caleb with his homework. There was a fire in the fireplace and peace in my heart, as I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, and everything was quiet. I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.