“I would crack a smile, but I don’t like breaking things.”

“I would have to break the ice with a warm smile that would melt her heart.”

“Our family used to be like this strong cup,” thought Francie. “It was whole and sound and held things well. When papa died, the first crack came. And this fight tonight made another crack. Soon there will be so many cracks that the cup will break and we'll all be pieces instead of the whole thing together. I don't want this to happen, yet I'm deliberately making a deep crack.”

“I would like to understand things better, but I don’t want to understand them perfectly.”

“If I were standing right beside her, I probably would have heard her heart breaking. It would have sounded like the cracking of a wooden bat connecting with a baseball. No, that was too clean of a break. It would have sounded like rain from a powerful thunderstorm pounding on a tin roof. Millions of drops relentlessly pounding away on the surface until it shattered into billions of tiny pieces. Pieces Emily couldn’t put back together by herself.”

“If a cat spoke, it would say things like 'Hey, I don’t see the problem here.”