“If you stay alive for no reason at all, please do it for spite.”

“You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there.”

“it is clear that we must trust what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.”

“There is a reason for everything, Opal. You might not be able to figure it out, and time might have made us all forget it, but the reason is there all the same.”

“In spite of all the farmer's work and worry, he can't reach down to where the seed is slowly transmuted into summer. The earth bestows.”

“So quickly in youth do different and opposite trains of ideas and emotions succeed to each other; and so easy it is, by a timely exercise of reason and self-command, to prevent a fancy from becoming a passion.”

“I had stay alive, and if that meant pretending that I had knowledge of my ex-boyfriend’s whereabouts that would likely lead to his death, then so be it. This was the closest I had gotten to finding Alex, and I wasn’t going to let go of this last shred of immortal in my life. Because if I did, I would likely convince myself that it was too good to be true; that it had only been a dream gone awry; and that the last three months were just a figment of my imagination.”