First you try to find a reason, try to understand what you’ve done so wrong so you can be sure not to do it anymore. After that you look for signs of a Jekyll and...

The water is very green and has a sweet taste, both boys wrote in their diaries, at different times.

[i]We were fighting so very hard and achieving so very little aside from staying alive. BUT THAT’S EVERYTHING, my father wrote to me, when I told him that in a letter.[/i]

And without further argument he unsheathed the sword and cleaved Miss Foxe’s head from her neck. He knew what was supposed to happen. He knew that this awkward, whispering creature before him should now transform...

She encouraged herself to see her very small presence in the world as a good thing, a power, something that a hero might possess.

Mostly, when Jess didn’t want to talk about her ideas in class, Colleen thought that Jess was showing off, making sure that she would be coaxed and pleaded with, but how could Jess have explained...

And I think I decided not to love Charlie because I thought I had to be rescued. For practical reasons but also as a proof of love. It’s better that Charlie and I didn’t make...

Dear Miranda Silver,This house is bigger than you know! There are extra floors, with lots of people in them. They are looking people. They look at you, and they never move. We do not like...

Because he says he can’t stand you and you act like you can’t stand him, and whenever a man and a woman behave like that toward each other, it usually means something’s going on.

Please tell me a story about a girl who gets away.”I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. “Gets away from what, though?””From...

He honestly expected her to believe that she could make a bad offering and her ancestors wouldn’t mind.

This is sky,” and point, but the eyes can’t discover the dividing line.

This was a little house, with a ceiling that kept getting higher and higher, a hot place with no windows. This was anger.

I was born, and then I was quietly resentful of that fact for a few years…but then I went to a library and it was okay.

I’m never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where...

I drew a chair up beside her and sang. All I do is dream of you the whole night through . . . It was a horrible rendition, and I quite enjoyed attempting it, setting...

She looked at the last thing she had written and she felt calm. Then she crossed the words out vehemently, scribbling until even the shape of the sentence was destroyed.

It was one of those ones they call screwball comedies, where people mislead and ill-treat each other in the most shocking and baffling way possible, then forgive and forget about it because they happen to...

I hate that my life is teaching me that I can only be loved if I put my love out of reach and just drift above people until they love my remoteness.

I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don’t have names.

No, this is pretty much the same version I read,” I said, because it felt too damn late to back down. I imagine that from time to time some similar situation has led governments to...

It was snowing when I got off the bus at Flax Hill. Not quite regular snowfall, not exactly a blizzard. This is how it was: The snow came down heavily, settled for about a minute,...

I think her favorite thing about our . . . collaboration was her actor and musician friends rubbing shoulders with my academic colleagues, she liked the atmosphere of challenge, the way anything that came under...

In Narnia a girl might ring a bell in a deserted temple and feel the chime in her eyes, pure as the freeze that forces tears. Then when the sound dies out, the White Witch...

I believe in him,” she said slowly. I wondered if she’d ever told him that, and if so, what he had to say about it. Someone you made up turns around and tells you they...

… there’s a difference between having no one because you’ve chosen it and having no one because everyone has been taken away.

All through dinner Arturo and I held hands under the table like a couple of kids, and that made the dinner quite wonderful, even though Mrs. Fletcher kept staring at Olivia as though committing her...

Imagine having a mother who worries that you read too much. The question is, what is it that’s supposed to happen to people who read too much? How can you tell when someone’s crossed the...

With growing disbelief, Jess yet again felt herself slipping into the gap – that gap of perception between what is really happening to a person and what others think is happening.

School is one long illness with symptoms that switch every five minutes so you think it’s getting better or worse. But really it’s the same thing for years and years.

Finally, he smiled, and although his smile was bumpy because some of his teeth were jagged and broken, it was a warming, infectious smile that was reflected in his eyes. It made her smile widely...

Our favorite film is Vertigo. Amy Eleni and I must watch it seventeen or eighteen times a year, and with each viewing our raptness grows looser and looser; we don’t need the visuals anymore–one or...

He answered with a smile. The darkest and most malignant I had ever seen, too strong to be voluntary. The door, I thought. The door. But I didn’t dare turn to it, in case it...

I would like to have nothing to do with you for hours on end and then come back and find you, come back with things I’ve thought and found all on my own— on my...

Jess couldn’t stop spitting out words, because they were words like blades to hurt, and if she swallowed them, she’d be scraped hollow.

I collected pictures and I drew pictures and I looked at the pictures by myself. And because no one else ever saw them, the pictures were perfect and true. They were alive.

Aside from infrequent comments (“Cheer up, love,” or “It’s not Hallo’ween”), no one wondered why a teenager was dressed up as a chic governess. Sylvie approved of Miri, even at the same time as she...

So she quit working to make sense of things— we don’t realise it, but it’s hard work we do almost every waking moment, building out thoughts and memories and actions around time, things that happened...