“A cloud in a box would blow my mind, would knock my socks off. I hoped the gift was a cloud in a box. I was curious; I had my doubts.”

“I can't tell her the truth. I cannot tell her that there is no such thing as okay. There is just life. Sometimes it will be good and other times it will be bad.”

“It is a fine line to walk when teaching someone that life is both beautiful and dangerous, to open up to the world as well as be on guard.”

“Good stories bare the heart and soul of human beings.”

“Unwell? I was fine, as good as one might feel in such circumstances. No, my friend, I merely pretended to faint. I'm a good actress. Actually, a thought had come into my mind: if a terrorist, I said to myself, were to blow up this church with all of us inside, at least one-tenth of all the hypocrisy in the world would disappear with us. So I had myself escorted out.”

“I didn't know where love would lead me, but my pack would always be at my side. More than anything else, that was what mattered.”

“A poem was a box for your soul. That was the point. It was the place where you could save bits of yourself, and shake out your darkest feelings, without worrying that people would think you were strange. While I was writing, I would forget myself and everyone else; poetry made me feel part of something noble and beautiful and bigger than me. [...] I slid them under the carpet as soon as they were done, all the images and rhymes wrestled into place. By the time I had copied them out, I found I had memorized every line. Then they would surprise me by surging through me, like songs I knew by heart.”