“You never really heard anything about Humpty when he was whole; only that he was broken, irreparable.”

“Before long, everyone was giving him answers, and feeling a little superior, because it was really remarkable the number of things Chrestomanci seemed not to know. He had heard of Hitler, though he asked Brian to refresh his memory about him, but he had only the haziest notion about Gandhi or Einstein, and he had never heard of Walt Disney or reggae.”

“He clears his throat, "Have you considered he sees you as a girl at school? Not all girls are whole when you meet them. Sometimes you have to help them get there. Right now, you are a broken girl. That doesn’t mean that you'll always be broken. That doesn’t make you less of a girl." He clears his throat again, "I'll call the doc. She'll want to talk to you."The tears in my eyes don’t come out. They stay in there like tiny kaleidoscopes, trying to make the world the way I need it to be. My words don’t come right away either. I don’t hear the click on his end when I whisper, "I'm not broken." But he isn’t there. He never really is. He is the master of not being there.”

“Because he never said it first---he would only ever say 'I love you, too.' And I would hate to think that he was talking about the band U2 the whole time, you know?”

“He's never known anything like it! But then, he has never known anything to write home about, so this is nothing to write home about. ”

“I heard you laughing,' Jack said. He wanted to say something about the quality of that terrible laughter, but he did not know how to begin. So he said, ' I've never heard anyone laugh like you do.”