“But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage lumps on the shoulders- no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings... ”

“They say that shoulder blades are where your wings were, when you were an angel," she said. "They say they're where your wings will grow again one day.”

“If I could grow wings, I could fly. Only people can't grow wings," he say's. "Real or not real?""Real," I say. "But people don't need wings to survive.""Mockingjays do.”

“I thought of the stone angel. I pictured the snow falling over it, two classes of snow rising on the top of its wings. So silent, the both of them, the angel and the snow. I pretended I was the stone angel. I close my eyes and pretended as hard as I could, and after a while I was convinced I could feel wings sprouting from my shoulders. I wanted to look, to see my wings, but I was an angel stone, so I could not move.”

“Catching my breath. I watch them go. I watch them disregard gravity, the ground, and the distance between us. And though an old feeling, one of the wings, haunts my shoulder blades, I stay pinned to the window. I’ve learned that I cannot go with them”

“For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance. Two beautiful wings is perfection. There is a generation of people who idealize perfection as the existence of only one of these wings every time. But I see that a bird with one wing is imperfect. An angel with one wing is imperfect. A butterfly with one wing is dead. So this generation of people strive to always cut off the other wing in the hopes of embodying their ideal of perfection, and in doing so, have created a crippled race.”