“But maybe if he got close to me I could feel something. Maybe I could cry and the ache would go away.”

“I couldn't even be mad at him, because this was who he was. This was who he'd always been. He'd never lied about that. He gave and then he took away. I felt it in the pit of my stomach, the familiar ache, that lost, regretful feeling only he could give me. I never wanted to feel it again. Never, ever. Maybe this was why I came, so I could really know. So I could say good-bye.”

“If you could offer me a guarantee, Ely, a guarantee that the hurt that makes my heart feel like a boulder sitting inside my chest, beatless, if I knew this hurt would eventually go away and I could feel hope again - for me, for you, for us - then maybe my lips could "unlock" now and we could get on with this. The End.”

“The only way out of this was to figure out a compromise they could both live with. Maybe I could convince Miles and Savannah to forgo the public apology if I met them over coffee. Maybe I could convince Evie to stop crying foul. And hey! After that maybe I could spin straw into gold!”

“I don’t want to go (...) Maybe if you had already graduated, you could go with me. It would be a possibility. But, as long as you are here, that’s where I am going to be”

“My unhappiness was something deep inside me, and when i closed my eyes i could even see it. it sat somehwere - maybe in my belly, maybe in my heart; i could not exactly tell - and it took the shape of a small black ball, all wrapped up in cobwebs. i would look at it and look at it until i had burned the cobwebs away, and then i would see that the ball was no bigger than a thimble, even though it weighed worlds. at that moment, just when i saw its size and felt its weight, i was beyond feeling sorry for myself, which is to say i was beyond tears. i could only just sit and look at myself, feeling like the oldest person who had ever lived and who had not learned a single thing.”