“I preferred to hang out with the dead, dying, or desperate books - used we call them, in a way that we'd never call a person, unless we meant it cruelly”

“Lying is manipulation. I prefer to call what I did ‘improvisation in times of desperation.”

“Are you, are youComing to the treeWhere they strung up a man they say murdered threeWhere the dead man called out for his love to fleeWhere I told you to run, so we'd both be free Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with meStrange things did happen here No stranger would it beIf we met up at midnight in the hanging tree”

“Unless their use by readers bring them to life, books are indeed dead things.”

“There are those individuals who die for a cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity.Yet many others search their entire lives for something—or someone—worth dying for and this is very different. These are the lonely and the desperate, fearful that their lives have no meaning. They yearn for the bullet, if only someone else will pull the trigger.”

“And although we'd sworn we'd never become like them, that was exactly what was happening. We weren't even fifteen yet. Thirteen, fourteen, adult, dead.”