Teachers loved to say people had potential; that’s what teachers did to keep themselves from getting canned. What were they supposed to say-I’m sorry, your kid has no promise whatsoever? She’s utterly mediocre in every...

There were so many Jacks she had known, and he had known so many Hazels. And maybe she wasn’t going to be able to know all the Jacks that there would be. But all the...

She just eyed them coolly, as if they were nothing to her, as if their nothingness surprised and slightly repelled her.

If shadows were caused by the interplay between light and Life, a child’s was still forming. An adult’s was inextricably bound to his body, but a child had a tenuous relationship to his own permanence,...

She looked at her shelves, filled with books in which the bad stuff that happened to people was caused by things like witches who lured people into the woods. In a weird way, the world...

Now, the world is more than it seems to be. You know this, of course, because you read stories. You understand that there is the surface and then there are all the things that glimmer...

His words sounded foolish to his own ears. He was not impressive. He was small like the world.

She did not like seeing her loved ones like this, bent over with sorrow; everything in her wanted to cry out, to thrash and scream at the sight of it. But she knew that great...

What are you supposed to do when something like that happens? Do you hold on or let go?