“Do you have any idea how hard a story is to write? My brain is jumpy, and my heart doesn't know where to live. Is Male is such an imperfect narrator, but he will try to finish his tale.”

“You have to stop and freeze the moment," he told me I had told her. "You have to make yourself remember by repeating it in your head over and over. You have to write to preserve your sanity.”

“Honor is truth. Truth has many meanings, but it first means that you have to be true to yourself. It is hard to be true to yourself because it is hard to be yourself.”

“What I carry in my backpack down to the river, I carry not knowing that in less than an hour Thomas Broughton will be dead. That is not a knowledge I carry yet, but I will carry it soon - the knowledge of my darkest self - and I will carry it forever.”

“Read to your heart’s content. Though if you are a reader, the heart is never content.”

“Writing is about making choices, Miss Dovecott says. One word or phrase or title over another. So many options that they're almost overwhelming. Which is why it is sometimes so easy to grab the cliché, to reach out to what is familiar. But don't. Because metaphor is all about the comparison of two unfamiliar, unlike things.”

“Even English-teacher bookworms need friends and bars.”