“Houses are cellular walls; they keep our problems from bleeding into everyone else's.”

“It still hurts," she whispered. "Even when you're doing it for someone else, that doesn't stop your ribs from getting cracked, or your wrist swelling, or your cuts from bleeding.”

“There's a problem with wounded birds. Either they fly away from you one day, or else they never get better. They stay hurt no matter what you do”

“You build a wall to keep something unwanted out … or to hold something precious in.”

“But rules only work when everyone plays by them. What happens when someone doesn't, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? Whats stronger- the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?”

“Teachers deserve respect," I explain. "Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?”

“It is so easy to presume that while your own world has ground to an absolute halt, so has everyone else's.”