Before that night, I didn’t grasp that the shadows that sometimes crossed her face weren’t momentary clouds passing in front of the sun. Her deep silences were more than daydreams. And her habit of standing...

This is not something anyone can teach you. Heartbreak you must learn on your own.

Illness can be undignified. Suffering does not have a purpose, and relationships are complicated. In the most painful way a person can, Hazel comes to realize, that love does not, cannot, conquer death. What it...

But if love can be funny and capricious, it can also be strong enough to seem like a sign of insanity.

As children we read to escape—to enter fantasy worlds where a bespectacled boy can discover he’s a wizard or a brave girl can find a magical passage through a wardrobe. But we also read to...

I think inspiration is strongest when I find a balance between observation and participation. You can’t write about what it means to dance by watching from the bleachers.

I’m sorry,’ I whispered. I didn’t know whether I was sympathizing with her broken heart or apologizing for a family who had had theirs broken, too.

Childhood is not all candy stores and recess; it’s frustrations and confusions, too.

Even knowing, as I do now, that grace, power, and, yes, love can hide the darkest elements of the human heart, I would do it all again.

Heartache, guilt, loss, grief, these things, too, are monsters.

In the Empire, the Scholars are not allowed to read and, like so many bullies and power-seekers who hide behind ideologies to justify the terrible things they do, their oppressors wear masks. ‘An Ember in...