“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”

“We...do things a lot differently, yes, but in many ways we are just the same as you...We eat, we sleep, we breathe. We smile when we're happy, and we cry when we're sad. When we swim, we must come up for air. When we work all day, our backs get sore. When we get cut, we bleed.”

“… I was thinking, listlessly, is this what it means to be happy? But now I feel it in my gut. Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated – defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Still, to cease living is unacceptable.”

“Sometimes we get sad about things and we don't like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don't know why we are sad, so we say we aren't sad but we really are.”

“We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated - defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Still, to cease living is unacceptable.”

“Sometimes we get so used to not really feeling anything, just going with the flow, that we forget how it feels to be really happy or sad.”