“Have you ever had a moment where you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you were in the right place? That you were on the right journey? Maybe the sense that you’d crossed a boundary, jumped a hurdle, and somehow, after facing some unconquerable mountain, found yourself suddenly on the other side of it? When the night was warm and the wind was cool, and a song carried through the quiet streets around you. When you felt the entire world around you, and you were part of it—of the hum of it—and everything was good.Contentment, I suppose, is the simple explanation for it. But it seems more than that, thicker than that, some unity of purpose, some sense of being truly, honestly, for that moment, at home.Those moments never seem to last long enough. The song ends, the breeze stills, the worries and fears creep in again and you’re left trying to move forward, but glancing back at the mountain behind you, wondering how you managed to cross it, afraid you really didn’t—that the bulk and shadow over your shoulder might evaporate and re-form before you, and you’d be faced with the burden of crossing it again.The song ends, and you stare at the quiet, dark house in front of you, and you grasp the doorknob, and walk back into your life.”

“...And perhaps you can sense, in some small twisting loop of your gut, the convergence of the wrong, of the right, and of the woefully misguided. If you do, then pay sharp attention to the moment you wake, and the moment you fall asleep...For maybe then you will know, without a shadow of a doubt, which is which.”

“She could hear, some way off, her brothers calling to each other in the woods behind the house. She hoped desperately that their game wouldn't bring them any closer, that they wouldn't scare the birds away. Somehow she knew that you didn't get many moments like this in your life: moments when you knew, without any doubt, that you were alive, when you felt the air in your lungs and the wet grass beneath your feet and the cotton on your skin; moments when you were completely in the present, when neither the past nor the future mattered. She tried to slow her breathing, hoping somehow to make this moment last forever.”

“Always think extra hard before crossing over to a bad side, if you were weak enough to cross over, you may not be strong enough to cross back!”

“You couldn’t have been said to dance, exactly. Despite the music sounding around you, bodies being carried away by the whirling bass, it didn’t get inside you. You used to trace out the steps, but you were mimicking dancing, rather than doing it. You would dance alone. When a look crossed yours, you’d smile like someone caught off guard in an absurd situation.”

“What was it you told me before you crossed back here the last time? Ah, yes. I think it went along the lines of 'geez, Jasper, it's way safer over there than over here!'" His sky blue eyes were filled with amusement. "The last time you crossed, I found you on the verge of being raped. Now this time around, we're here just over amonth and you manage to get held up at knifepoint.”