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21 " Now when those dark times happen, I curl into a ball on my cot and make a cape with my blanket. I remind myself I am not dust, but I should be. I tell myself I am made of the same cells as life itself even if I am a mistake. "
― Rene Denfeld , The Enchanted
22 " Their footsteps sound like the soft hush of rain over the stone floors. "
23 " You can get a taste of an idea inside you, and the next thing you know, it won't leave. Until you do something about it. "
24 " Ideas are powerful things; we should take more care with them. I know there are some who would disagree - those who think ideas are like food they can taste and then spit out if they don't like it. But ideas are stronger than that. You can get a taste of an idea inside you, and the next think you know, it won't leave. Until you do something about it "
25 " After a time, it seemed that the world inside the books became my world. So when I thought of my childhood, it was dandelion wine and ice cream on a summer porch, like Ray Bradbury, and catching catfish with Huck Finn. My own memories receded and the book memories became the real memories, far more than the outside, far more even than in here. B "
26 " How odd it is, that the dead weigh more than the living. You would think it would be the opposite, but it isn’t. I think it is because souls give bodies lightness and air. When the soul leaves, the body has nothing left and is desperate to return to the earth. "
27 " People try to make names for things they don't understand. "
28 " Sweet as sugar. And then he hardened. I can’t ’splain it another way. He was like sugar in a jar that hardens. And after a while you take it out, and it is one rock-solid lump. "
29 " People try to make names for things they don't understand "
30 " This got me thinking - if there are things inside us too tiny to see, might there be things outside us too big to believe? "
31 " The window is the reason the death row inmates go to the visiting room to see their lawyers and investigators. The lawyers think their clients want to see them. No, they want to see the window. "
32 " She is afraid, and yet she wants the priest to see inside her and accept the monsters that wrap around the secret, pure part of her--the part she managed to save, miraculously, that so many of us have lost. she knows the monsters are there and yet wants to be seen. "
33 " The truth is, clocks don’t tell time. Time is measured in meaning. "
34 " Inside, the lies you tell become the person you become. On the outside, sun and reality shrink people back to their actual size. In here, people grow into their shadows. "
35 " I imagine he knows magic, if he is reading books. The book itself doesn’t matter. It’s that he found another world in it. "
36 " The walls that might make others feel like they are suffocating have become my lungs. "
37 " You can tell me anything, her eyes say, because I will see the beauty in everything you say. "
38 " Even monsters need a person who truly wants to listen - to hear - so that someday we might find the words that are more than boxes. "
39 " He knows that when she passes, a grief will rip through him unlike anything he has ever known. Preparing for it doesn't help. He just knows it will come. It is like realizing you are sailing a boat across an ocean and soon you will find the other shore- it will be just you and acres of dry, blinding white sand. There may be trees on that island, and sun, and food, but none of it will feel or taste right, because you will stand there and realize: I am alone. "
40 " They can keep men in here, under lock and key, deep in the dungeon until the final moments of their lives, so that men like York and me will never taste the rain. But they cannot keep us from passing our condensation on to the sky. They cannot keep us from raining down in China. "