“I love and hate this place because it is full of words.”

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”

“Believe it or not--it takes a lot of love to hate you like this.”

“Something I'd like to be perfect at? ... Loving you,' I said. The words climbed from my mouth. 'I'd want to be perfect at loving you.”

“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.”

“The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words.”

“Those images were the world, and it stewed in her as she sat with the lovely books and their manicured titles. It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words. You bastards, she thought. You lovely bastards. Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think something good can come from any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything anymore.”