“Maybe there would be a little less fear in the world if we all had the courage to share our own. Maybe then we wouldn’t feel so alone.”

“Maybe, just maybe, a reader would feel a little less alone in the world.”

“If I had been a different sort of person, maybe less impressionable, less intense, less fearful, less utterly dependent upon the perceptions of others - maybe then I would not have bought the cultural party line that thinness is the be-all and end-all of goals. Maybe if my family had not been in utter chaos most of the time, maybe if my parents were a little better at dealing with their own lives maybe if I'd gotten help sooner, or if I'd gotten different help, maybe if I didn't so fiercely cherish my secret, or if I were not such a good liar, or were not quite so empty inside... maybe.”

“Maybe we all just want to feel special, even for a little while, to be fooled for a bit into feeling something besides the truth of our own ordinariness.”

“Maybe all of us at Hailsam had little secrets like that -- little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone without fears and longing.”

“I suppose it had something to do with it being a secret, just how much it had meant to me. Maybe all of us at Hailsham had little secrets like that--little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone with our fears and longings. But the very fact that we had such needs would have felt wrong to us at the time--like somehow we were letting the side down.”