“Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angry—at someone else or at herself—which meant that it was rare for her to shed tears.”

“But it was a lie. She just craved more time with Blake. During those minutes each morning and evening, she felt herself becoming someone she’d never been before. Not someone else, really, but fully herself. She basked in Blake’s attention.”

“When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light.”

“She would not shed a tear, she would not waste the rest of her years simmering in the maggot broth of memory.”

“If she had been born a hundred years later, she would very likely have been encouraged to be angry, told she had a right to express her anger and her sorrow and her bewilderment and her rage, and generally to disintegrate. These were not the expectations of her friends and family. Nothing could have been further from her expectations of herself. Instead, she threw herself into serving others.”

“I wish everyone would stop crying, Tom. Uncle Joe would be so angry about it." But she's crying herself now. "He'd be so angry at us, Tom, for crying so much when all he did was laugh.”