Color fills her cheeks, and I think it again: that Johanna Reyes might still be beautiful. Except now I think that she isn't just beautiful in spite of the scar, she's somehow beautiful with it, like Lynn with her buzzed hair, like Tobias with the memories of his father's cruelty that he wears like armor, like my mother in her plain gray clothing.

Just because they didn’t shoot you all in the head doesn’t mean their intentions were somehow honorable. Why do you think they came here? Just to run through your hallways, knock you conscious, and leave?

She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love, not misplace disgust for another person's genetics.

Desperation can make a person do surprising things.

You need to be passionate about the creative work that you're doing, but you need to be kind of emotionally separated from how people react to it or how it does. Those things should be secondary, and primary should be your love of the creative act.

My father says that those who want power and get it live in terror of losing it. That's why we have to give power to those who do not want it.

It doesn't take skill to stand in a place were no bullets find you, or to fire into the dark and hit a man you didn't see.