“I want to make the world into something better so that he can be okay.”

“I wanted so badly to tell him, but something about that entire night seemed so beautiful, so bizarre, that I didn't trust it with my secrets.”

“I want to make a world more magical than my own. I don't care if it makes sense, I don't care if it's ridiculed or if, rather than a neat round planet that goes around forever, it ends with a cliff that falls off into nothing. I want to have my eyes wide open, and I want to see this room and at the same time, not this room.”

“There are so many of us, so many girls. The world wants us for our wombs or our bodies, or it doesn't want us at all.”

“You have a way of looking at things. You make it seem as though everything's going to be okay. I can't imagine a more dangerous thing to have than hope like yours.”

“I open my mouth to, I don't know, apologize again maybe. But he takes my face in his hands and presses his forehead to mine. And he's so close that I can feel his little warm breaths, and all I know is that when he draws his next breath, I want to get sucked in.Our lips touched, almost as soft as not touching at all. Then they press closer to each other, draw back uncertainly, touch again. There is warmth shooting through my broken body where there should be pain, and I put my arms around the back of his neck and I hold on to him. I hold on because you never know in this place when something good will be taken away.”

“I can almost see what Gabriel meant when he asked, 'What has the free world got that you can’t get here?'Almost.Freedom, Gabriel. That’s what you can’t get here.”