“scraps of lovetorn and tatteredfaded, scatteredtrashedthreads of hopefrayed and tangledbroken, mangleddashedbacking, buttonsyarn and battingquilted tenderlywrapped up inthis warm repairmy patchwork family”

“You told us over and over that you don’t think you could live without books, but the ironic thing is, you’d probably die before you’d think to rip pages out of one to start a fire. Am I right?Well, get over it already. Better to be warm then well-read.”

“Now, I know from experience that the trouble with one lie is that it usually takes more lies to cover it up.  And if you don't watch out, you wind up telling lies to cover up the lies that are covering up the original lie. ”

“Sometimes I get so caught up in my own problems that I forget how amazing the world is.”

“Don't sum up a person based on what you see, or what you don't understand; get to know them”

“I’m not going to be able to sleep a wink tonight.I hate shelters.People coughing and snoring and hacking up who-knows-what.It’s a nightmare.But I do have clean teeth.”

“And then she started climbing/ The girl is in the seventh grade, and she's climbing a tree--way, way up in the tree. And why does she do it? So she can yell down at us that the bus is five! four! three blocks away! Blow-by-blow traffic watch from a tree--what every kid in junior high feels like hearing first thing in the morning. She tried to get me to come up there with her, too. "Bryce, come on! You won't believe the colors! It's absolutely magnificent! Bryce, you've got to come up here!" Yeah, I could just hear it: "Bryce and Juli sitting in a tree..." Was I ever going to leave the second grade behind?”