“Draco dormiens nunquam titillandu. A sleeping dragon is never to be tickled.”

“Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus[never tickle a sleeping dragon]”

“I’m an oncologist, not a podiatrist.” My skin unzipped. Those were the worst kinds of doctors. They never saved anyone.”

“Laura Ingalls Wilder should have been in class with us, too. With friends like us, she never would have had to put up with Nelly Olsens or Jenny Pratts. With friends like us, she never would have had to feel bad about wearing her same dress every single day of her life.”

“At the door, I looked back at all those people I didn’t know and thought about how small your heart is but how big of a space it takes up. And how, even though you can’t see it, that heart space grows so quietly across a room or up some stairs into someone else’s living room, that even if you never step foot in it again, the air in there is changed forever.”

“Mary made him lie down in the middle of the stage. Then she started singing, “Everything’s all right, yes, everything’s fine …” and rubbing something on his forehead, which wasn’t going to help him. No one ever gets saved by a forehead rub. Ask Laura Ingalls Wilder if you don’t believe me. But Mary kept doing it anyway, begging him to let the world turn without him tonight because everything was all right—which it wasn’t, because even his best friend, Judas, was acting weird.”

“But the truth was that Laura Ingalls Wilder was the nicest girl I’d ever not known. Rennie would throw me under a bus for a piece of chocolate.”