“Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers”

“I felt suddenly cruel, like I'd told small children there was no tooth fairy, that it was just their Mom sneaking into their room after they went to bed.”

“It felt like I'd only just fallen asleep when someone shook me awake. I pushed the person off, snuggling deeper in my covers.It wasn't until I had buried my face in my pillow that I realized I should probably be alarmed that someone was in my room. What with evil trolls trying to kidnap me and all that.”

“High school parties exhausted me because I always felt like I was the only thinking person in a room mostly full of morons obliterating precious IQ points with every gulp of whatever booze they managed to steal out of their parents' liquor cabinets. College parties are exhausting in a diametrically opposite way. They are full of smart, funny people who are all used to being the smartest, funniest person in the room, so they spend the whole party talking over one another, overlapping and overtaking the conversation to prove that they are the smartest, funniest person in the room, if not the entire planet.”

“Wherever I went, I was on the wrong end of the stampede.”

“Sara waited a respectful time, knowing there was nothing she could do to ease the woman's pain. Grief was a place, Sara understood, where a person went alone. It was like a room without doors, and what happened in that room, all the anger and the pain you felt, was meant to stay there, nobody's business but yours.”