“Both their attention and their neglect were equally intolerable. His world had become complicated and interesting and magical. Theirs was mundane and domestic. They didn't understand that the world they could see wasn't the one that mattered, and they never would.”

“The stories didn't seem to care who he was or what he could do; it didn't matter. In their world, he wasn't alone. In their world, a freak like him - like him - could become a hero.”

“It's easy to believe in magic when you're young. Anything you couldn't explain was magic then. It didn't matter if it was science or a fairy tale. Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious and equally possible - elves probably more so.”

“She wasn't sure who were family & who were friends, and maybe they all were both, and maybe it didn't matter one bit.”

“Was everyone else really as alive as she was?... If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance.”

“And I could feel what he felt on the night when he realize that if he didn't leave, it would never be his life. It would be theirs.”