“I work in a restaurant in an airport in Taiwan. I am eighteen years old and I don’t like my job because everyone gets on planes and leaves. And I want to leave too.”

“I don’t know if it was just me making things up in my head but after the fear in their eyes had gone what replaced it was like a sad kind of wondering. A wondering of where the old me was hiding. A wondering about where the old me had gone to. It was like I had suddenly been taken over by someone else and they could see the old me had fallen away for good.”

“Something else you should really know about me. When I get nervous, my fingers shake. I’ve noticed this a lot recently. When mother and father argue and their voices are falling around the small family apartment, when their voices are banging against my bedroom door, I can feel my fingers start to move. I tell my fingers to stop and, sometimes, they do. But if I look at my hands closely, once I’ve told them to stop, and I try to focus on keeping them as still as possible, I notice that they are still moving.”

“He smiles and I smile and we take long beautiful sips on our cokes.”

“Most of the time we just stay quiet and listen to the city outside and hold onto each other before the sleep takes over. Before the sleep gets us.”

“I must write…I like to write. Sometimes I’m afraid that I like it too much because when I get into work I don’t want to leave it. As a result I’ll go for days without leaving the house or wherever I happen to be. I’ll go out long enough to get papers and pick up some food and that’s it. It’s strange, but instead of hating writing I love it too much. --Harper Lee”

“I told the waitress I wanted some coffee. She asked if I wanted leaded of unleaded, so I had to leave the restaurant, because I quit drinking gasoline years ago.”