“I would always be lonely, but no more alone.”

“You're not supposed to have iron bars around you - no one is supposed to have that. You're supposed to fall down hills and get lonely, and find your own food and get wet when it rains. That's what happens when you're alive.”

“More than this, I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing for children. It is writing that is carried in the reader's heart for a lifetime; it is writing that speaks to the future.”

“Just a few more minutes here, I suggest: life hates to leave, worried what it might miss. But Vernon, closer, is shaking his head. This is all.”

“I looked along the aisle and saw her, and it was as if I saw her for the first time. Everything changed. The ancient featureless interior of me spangled orange, mint, cat-blue. I looked back to the window immediately, my face damp, my breath caught. And worried I would never have the courage to look at her again.”

“There is nothing that is more beautiful than everything else in the world.”

“Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.”