“You can want one thing and have a secret wish for its opposite.”

“I've wished for things and never really had the chance...It's time to stop dreaming and do something about it. You've got to know what you want, then...go.”

“I had let want in, opened the door ever so slightly. But want without the belief you can get what you want is pointless. You have to hope, so I let that in too. You have to. To want things and go for them and believe, even in impossible situations...Hope was what you had when you had nothing else. Hope was the perfect shiny top on the Christmas tree, the glowing halo of every wish, the endless beacon of a lighthouse bringing tormented ships home at last.”

“Our memories and the events of our lives are untidy things. We wish that we could file them away and shut the door, or we wish the opposite - that they would stay with us forever. You want to banish the remembrance of a tight hold on your ankle, a rope under a bed, the amber-colored medicine bottles of your father, the door your mother slams after a night of too much wine and jealousy. You want to keep close to you always that first sweet kiss, a maple leaf, that growing sense of yourself; you want to hold the sight of your dying father on that last boat trip, the calm you remember as your mother held you. Her voice.”

“People are secretive when they have secrets.”

“Maybe it was wrong, or maybe impossible, but I wanted the truth to be one thing. One solid thing.”

“...wanting things for the wrong reasons can turn anyone's life into a marshmallow on a stick over a hot fire: impossibly messy and eventually consumed, one way or another.”