“The light made the snowballs look yellow. Or at least I hoped that was the cause.”

“I almost cried. But I didn't, because if you're in seventh grade and you cry while wearing a blue floral cape and yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, you just have to curl up and die somewhere in a dark alley.”

“(The raindrops) played across the coast all through the night, until the soft new day shrugged itself awake, tried on amethyst and lavender for a while, and finally decided on pale yellow.”

“There is no Art made without power, and there is no reason for Art to be made except for power.”

“You know, there are good reasons to learn how to read. Poetry isn't one of them. I mean, so what if two roads go two ways in a wood? So what? Who cares if it made all that big a difference? What difference? And why should I have to guess what the difference is? Isn't that what he's supposed to say?Why can't poets just say what they want to say and then shut up?”

“I think he became a man who brought peace and wisdom to hi world, because he knew about war and folly. I think that he loved greatly, because he had seen what lost love is. And I think he came to know, too, that he was loved greatly." She looked at the strawberry in her hands. "But I thought you didn't want me to tell you your future.”

“I'm not lying, I was a killer Helen Burns. I stepped out on to that stage like I was the Great Esquimaux Curlew. When Jane Eyre came to look at my book-- which happened to be Our Town -- I handed it to her just right. When Miss Scatchard told me I never cleaned my nails, I was about as quiet and innocent as a Large-Billed Puffin. When she hit me a dozen times with a bunch of twigs, I was the Brown Pelican: I didn't bat an eye -- and you try getting hit a dozen times with a bunch of twigs. And when I had to die, people were crying. Really. And you know why? Because I was the Black-Backed Gull, and so people cried like Helen Burns was their best friend.”