Patricia McCormick

“People who aren't asleep when Ruby comes around have to take sleeping pills. Everyone is afraid of those pills- even the substance- abuse guests.”

“Then I placed the blade next to the skin on my palm. A tingle arched across my scalp. The floor tipped up at me and my body spilled away. Then I was on the ceiling looking down, waiting to see what would happen next...”

“Rochelle," she calls out, still looking at me. "Is there anyone down at the desk? I need something."I'm too startled to move. Is she going to tell on me, get me in trouble?Rochelle's gotten up; she's banging the toilet stall doors open one by one, checking to make sure no one's in there. When the last stall turns up empty, she gives Amanda an annoyed look. "What do you need this time of night?"Amanda smiles at me, then turns to face Rochelle. "A tampon”

“Long time I been on my own, but now really I'm alone. I survive the killing, the starving, all the hate of the Khmer Rouge, but I think maybe now I will die of this, of broken heart.”

“Back at the hut, all my sister, they start to cry. "No crying," my aunt says, very strict. "You cry only in your mind."But later, when everyone else asleep, I hear my aunt, her tears, they fall like rain.”

“Inside my head I carry:my baby goat, my baby brother, my ama's face, our family's future. My bundle is light. My burden is heavy.”

“A KIND OF ILLNESSThis ache in my chest is a relentless thing, worse than any fever.A fever is gone with a few of Mumtaz's white pills. But this illness has had me in its grip for a week now.This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me.”

“Guard the portals of your mind.”

“A man who doles out sweets, and slaps, with the same hand.”

“Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.”

“That first phrase-please bless me, Father, for I have sinned-was so humbling and so total, Matt always felt a kind of absolution as soon as he said it”

“Then I place the blade next to the skine on my palm. A tingle arced across my scalp. The flood tipped up at me and my body spiraled away. Then I was on the ceiling looking down, waiting to see what would happen next. What happened next was thet a perfect, straight line of blood bloomed from under the blade.The line grow into a long, Fat bubbel, A lush crimson bubbel that got bigger and bigger. I watch from above, waiting to see how big it would get before it burst. when it did, I felt awesome. Satisfied, finally. Then exhausted.”

“If you look hard enough, chaos turns into order the way letters turn into words.”

“Instead, we linger over a luxury that costs nothing: Imagining what may be.”

“I imagine you working on me as an algebra problem, reducing me to fractions, crossing out common denominators, until there's nothing left on the page but a line that says x = whatever it is that is wrong with me.”

“When I have run out of words to copy, I look out the window at this strange place called India. Inside the train, the people around me are snoring. I don't understand how they can close their eyes when there is so much to see.”

“Trying to remember, I have learned, is like trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon.”

“Ama wipes her hands on her apron, looks up at our old roof with new eyes, and lifts the baby from his basket. She twirls him in the air, her skirts flying around her ankles the way the clouds swirl around the mountain cap--her laughter fresh and strange and musical to my ears.”

“In the evening, the brilliant yellow pumpkin blossoms will close, drunk on sunshine, while the milky white jasmine will open their slender throats and sip the chill Himalayan air.At night, low hearths will send up wispy curls of smoke fragrant with a dozen dinners, and darkness will clothe the land.Except on nights when the moon is full. On those nights, the hillside and the valley below are bathed in a magical white light, the glow of the perpetual snows that blanket the mountaintops. On those nights I lie restless in the sleeping loft, wondering what the world is like beyond my mountain home.”

“Simply to endure is to triumph.”

“This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me”