“I have always envied people who believe strongly in religion, people who could face a tragedy by praying and know that it would be all right. As unscientific as it seems, well, it would be nice to lay the responsibilities and pain on someone else's larger shoulders.”

“Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.”

“Other people look at me and think: That poor woman; she has a child with a disability. But all I see when I look at you is that girl who had memorized all the words to Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by the time she was three, the girl who crawls into bed with me whenever there's a thunderstorm - not because you're afraid but because I am, the girl whose laugh has always vibrated inside my own body like a tuning fork. I would never have wished for an able-bodied child, because that child would have been someone who wasn't you.”

“Being a teenager isn't all that different from being part of someone else's story. There's always someone who thinks they know better than you do”

“Someone real," I hear myself saying. "Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who's smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I've known my whole life, even if I haven't.”

“We could all be lucky. We could all be what we want to be, instead of who someone else told us to be.”

“All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.”