“Like I've been sketched by an amateur artist: if you don't look too closely, it's all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.”

“It's too late. I've seen things...I've lost things you can't understand.”

“It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It's never occurred to me before; I've never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different.”

“It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.”

“So many things become beautiful when you really look.”

“Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind.”

“And it's the funniest thing: as soon as I see it, the whistling in my ears stops and the feeling of terror drains away, and I realize this whole time I haven't been falling at all. I've been floating.”