“I think about what Devon would say. You have to Work At It Dad. You have to try even if it's hard and you think you can never do it and you just want to scream and hide and shake your hands over and over and over.”

“I know, I say, after he says, This is hard, for the third time. This is what happens when you have a TRM, I tell him. You make a mess. It's okay. You just have to try harder next time.I am trying hard, Dad says.I know. You get a sticker.Thank you.Okay. You get another sticker for being polite.”

“Sometimes I read the same books over and over and over. What's great about books is that the stuff inside doesn't change. People say you can't judge a book by its cover but that's not true because it says right on the cover what's inside. And no matter how many times you read that book the words and pictures don't change. You can open and close books a million times and they stay the same. They look the same. They say the same words. The charts and pictures are the same colors.Books are not like people. Books are safe.”

“Empathy isn't as hard as it sounds because people have a lot of the same feelings. And it helps to understand other people because then you can actually care about them sometimes. And help them. And have a friend.”

“He can kick as hard as he wants but he cannot destroy what is inside. I have a strong spirit and the Rat will never take that away from me, no matter what he does.-Matt”

“I don't like the word soon because you don't know when it's going to sneak up on you and turn into NOW. Or maybe it'll be the kind of soon that never happens.”

“A movie is better than real life because in the movies only the bad guys die. Or you can pick the good movies where the bad guys die and only those. If you get tricked and a good person dies in the movie then you can rewrite it in your head so the good person lives and the part about death is superfluous.”