“I think if you keep the box closed long enough you do kill the cat, actually.”

“So keeping the box closed just keeps you in the dark, not the universe.”

“Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn’t the way they actually are… People are different when you can smell them and see them up close…”

“But I had to kill you, because the only other possible ending was us doing it, which I wasn't really emotionally ready to write about at ten.''Fair enough,' I say. 'But in the revision, I want to get some action.”

“It seems to me that all the things we keep in sealed boxes are both alive and dead until we open the box, that the unobserved is both there and not.”

“all I have to do is stay in between the lines and make sure that no one is too close to me and I am not too close to anyone and keep leaving. Maybe it felt like this for her, too, but I could never feel like this alone.”

“It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.”