“I began to realize how hard it was to separate all the voices to hear the single, strong one that came just from me." —Mibs Beaumont”

“In most ways, Mibs, we Beaumonts are just like other people...We get born, and sometime later we die. And in between, we're happy and sad, we feel love and we feel fear, we eat and we sleep and we hurt like everyone else.—Momma”

“But as I grew up, I began to understand that a savvy is just a know-how of a different sort.”

“I'd grown used to all the voices inside of my head and knew which ones to pay attention to and which ones to ignore. The same went for all the voices outside of my head”

“I couldn't fathom it myself, but I guessed that happy endings came in all shapes and sizes.”

“Will looked back at me, startled, and I kept my heart muscle strong, feeling something inside me shiver like a pale green flower shoot just waking up for spring. But whatever that thing was, it was still too new to feel ready to bloom; it wanted time to set down roots. Someday soon I was going to bloom like crazy and then I'd have what I needed to keep me standing tall.”

“I wished that I...had no savvy at all. No savvy to cause me heartache. No savvy to make me hope, and then leave me useless.”