“I don't want to be kept safe! I don't want to have someone constantly trying to keep me from tripping on my own incompetence. I want to live in a world where I know the rules, where people are just people. Not one where they keep trying to eat me. That's the reason I left the city in the first place. I don't want to be kept, not by anyone.”

“I would have kept you safe,' he said.I closed my eyes, forcing the tears down my cheek to break against the dam of his fingers. 'I know.”

“Writer's block' is just a fancy way of saying 'I don't feel like doing any work today.”

“Josh: "Are there any rules to this deal I should know about?"Shel: "Don't make me want to keep you."Josh: "Well then, don't make me want to be kept.”

“What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.”

“But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want.”

“I don't want to be expected to fall in passively someone else's plans for me. That's what I don't want. I don't want it assumed that I simply don't have any personal goals or wishes of my own. Or any basic competence of my own. That's what I don't want! ”