“I’m sorry,’ I whispered. I didn’t know whether I was sympathizing with her broken heart or apologizing for a family who had had theirs broken, too.”

“But if love can be funny and capricious, it can also be strong enough to seem like a sign of insanity.”

“I think inspiration is strongest when I find a balance between observation and participation. You can’t write about what it means to dance by watching from the bleachers.”

“Childhood is not all candy stores and recess; it’s frustrations and confusions, too.”

“We cannot 100 percent know the depth of another person’s heart. We cannot know the whys and whats of his soul.This idea could be sad, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead of rendering human beings powerless, it could render them more compassionate. Knowing that the stranger who just bumped you in the hall or that the awkward loner who sits behind you in class each have a story, makes it easier to chose kindness — again, again, and again.”

“Heartache, guilt, loss, grief, these things, too, are monsters.”

“Even knowing everything, I would have chosen the same.It's only in hindsight that we can point, as easily as finding a town on a map, to the moments that shaped us, - the moments when choices between yeses and noes determined the people we become.”

“Even knowing, as I do now, that grace, power, and, yes, love can hide the darkest elements of the human heart, I would do it all again.”

“Before that night, I didn't grasp that the shadows that sometimes crossed her face weren't momentary clouds passing in front of the sun. Her deep silences were more than daydreams. And her habit of standing with her arms wrapped around her ribs was a way of holding herself together.I didn't get there must be balance.She couldn't hold so much life, light and joy without also containing their opposites.”

“I’m sorry,’ I whispered. I didn’t know whether I was sympathizing with her broken heart or apologizing for a family who had had theirs broken, too.”

“So self-assured were they all by nature that it never occurred to me to doubt that their perfection was predetermined by forces I did not understand. They were all royalty. They were all gods. They were all broken.”