“As we live, our hearts turn colder. Cause pain is what we go through, as we become older. We get insulted by others, lose trust for those others. We get back stabbed by friends. It becomes harder for us to give others a hand. We get our heart broken by people we love, even that we give them all we have. Then we lose family over time. What else could rust the heart more over time? Blackgold.”

“As I stand behind him, it occurs to me just how much trust we put in other people. Complete strangers, friends. Everybody. Dalton's just sitting there, relaxed, trusting that I'm not going to lose my temper and stab him in the back of the neck with a fork. Every time we get into a car, we trust everybody else on the road. Every time we walk on the sidewalk, we put our lives in other people's hands. We'd never even leave the house if we actually thought about how little control we have over living and dying.”

“All we are doing are self-portraits. As simple that. We accumulate knowledge and wisdom and power, and we get our hearts broken, and we write. We write for others to absorb what took us so long to understand.”

“It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute ... that gives meaning to our lives.”

“We're meant to stay connected to our hearts, you see. Feeling our feelings, present in the moments we're given. But we don't do that. And that's when we get in trouble. ...We mature and take responsibility for ourselves and others, and that's a good thing. But we're never meant to lose that alive quality, to get cut off from our true hearts. Growing up isn't the same thing as shutting down. ...We can fight it. We have to fight it. Because when our hearts shut down, we become mere shells of who we once were. We don't laugh—not honestly, not from the heart. We don't dream. We don't feel our feelings or use our gifts. We end up trying to just survive instead of live. It's like we've handed our hearts over to the enemy of our souls and said, 'Here you can have it. I'm giving up.”

“If we didn't have strong feelings, how could we love or fight? When our flesh is cut, we bleed. When our heart is broken, we cry. There's nothing wrong with that. It only becomes a problem when it gets in the way of what you have to do. You can't crumble when others are counting on you.”