“All I could do is lie there and think about how much her voice changed when she asked me if she was pretty, and how much she changed when I answered.”

“Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.”

“That's when I started thinking about my sister.I thought about the time when she and her friends painted my fingernails, and how that was okay because my brother wasn't there. And the time she let me use her dolls to make up plays or let me watch whatever I wanted to watch on TV. And when she started becoming a "young lady," and no one was allowed to look at her because she thought she was fat. And how she really wasn't fat. And how she was actually very pretty. And how different her face looked when she realized boys thought she was pretty. And how different her face looked the first time she really like a boy who was not on a poster on her wall. And how her face looked when she realized she was in love with that boy. And then I wondered how her face would look when she came out from behind those doors.”

“I never asked her how she was, because I didn't really think about how she was. I just thought about what she thought of me.”

“She had no experience of crushing on someone like that. She hadn't realized before how frightening it was to look a dream in the face. To realize how much it could change you live, and how much it could demand of you.”

“Her suicide shook me deeply. It changed so much about how I view myself, the work I do with all of you.”