This was the ghetto: where children grow down instead of up.

Who are you?’I didn’t understand the question.I’m Uri’, he said. ‘What’s your name?’I gave him my name. ‘Stopthief.

It was like the panting of a thousand puppies.

This was the start of a period that blurs as I try to recall it. Incidents seem to cascade and merge. Events become feelings, fellings become events. Head and heart are contrary historians.

If you start by hating one or two people, you won’t be able to stop. Pretty soon you’ll hate a hundred people.” “A zillion?” “Even a zillion. A little hatred goes a long, long way....

At the same time, we held back. Because she was different. Different. We had no one to compare her to, no one to measure her against.

When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light.

It is like the panting of a thousand puppies.

I did leave something behind with you: my heart. Of course, you didn’t know it at the time. Maybe I didn’t either. What have you done with my heart, Leo? Have you taken good care...

What she saw, she felt. Her eyes went straight to her heart.

In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew

It’s in the morning, for most of us. It’s that time, those few seconds when we’re coming out of sleep but we’re not really awake yet. For those few seconds we’re something more primitive than...

It was the day of the worms. That first almost-warm, after-the-rainy-night day in April, when you bolt from your house to find yourself in a world of worms. They were as numerous here in the...

Sometimes I try to erase myself. And then, if I’ve done a good job, I’m erased. I’m nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl. And...

Vowels were something else. He didn’t like them, and they didn’t like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into...

I felt alone on the planet, drifting through the cosmos. With both hands I reached out to the night. There was no answer. Or maybe I just couldn’t hear it.

Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories.

Let’s just be fabulously where we are and who we are. You be you and I’ll be me, today and today and today, and let’s trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track...

I understood. I suffered. But whose sake was I suffering for? I kept thinking of Señor Saguaro’s question: Whose affection do you value more, hers or the others’?

Every name is real. That’s the nature of names.

Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn...

You haven’t lived until you’ve basked in the adoration of people.

You’re cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you’re stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next...

Amanda took the torn page from Maniac. To her, it was the broken wing of a bird, a pet out in the rain.

I’m not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it.

She might be pointing to a doorway, or a person, or the sky. But such things were so common to my eyes, so undistinguished, that they would register as “nothing” I walked in a gray...

He still heard his mother’s voice–“Davey”–rise like whisper-dust from unseen corners in the house, but it was no longer the only voice he heard. His ears were also filled with the voices of others–his father...

If you believe it, it happens. If you don’t, it doesn’t. When you believe him, you put your own power in his hands.

You know, there’s a place we all inhabit, but we don’t much think about it, we’re scarcely conscious of it, and it lasts for less than a minute a day. It’s in the morning, for...

And the trouble with bad times is, you can’t sleep through them.

He tapped my chest. ‘Happy is here.’ He tapped his own chest. ‘Here.’I looked down past my chin. ‘Inside?”Inside.’It was getting crowded in there. First angel. Now happy. It seemed there was more to me...

If Heaven and angels exist in a timeless medium we call Forever (“Hey, nobody here but us angels!”) …Then … ues what? …There will be no end of me!

Some nights, we were a city of two.

They don’t live here. They live in Heaven.’Where’s that?’I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Enos says it’s right here, on this side of the wall, but I never saw an angel over here. Kuba says it’s...

It’s a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so...

Everybody has an angel hiding inside. When you die, your angel comes out. You can die, but not your angel. Your angel never dies.

His smile was so wide he’d have had to break it into sections to fit it through a doorway

A little hatred goes a long, long way. It grows and grows. And it’s hungry. You keep feeding it more and more people, and the more it gets, the more it wants. It’s never satisfied....

At this time in his life Zinkoff sees no difference between the stars in the sky and the stars in his mother’s plastic Baggie. He believes that stars fall from the sky sometimes, and that...

March 12Dear Stargirl, Hey, you’re a big girl now. Stop being such a baby. You think you’re the only one who’s ever lost a boyfriend? Boyfriends are a dime a dozen. You want to talk...

Do not follow me! Let’s just be fabulously where we are and who we are. You be you and I’ll be me, today and today and today, and let’s trust the future to tommorrow. Let...

I’m looking over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before.

Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!

Home is everything you can walk to.

As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other’s eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of...

Friendship isn’t always sunnyside up.

Did I ever tell you my pet peeve?’No,’ I said.People who dress up their pets to look like Little Lord Fauntleroys or cowboys, clowns, ballerinas. As if it’s not enough just to be a dog...

She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.

The pure whiteness, dazzling in the sun, was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Who was I to spoil it? Snow falls. Earth says: Here’s a gift for you. And what...

So, I said, when does the enchantment start? We were sitting side by side, facing the mountains. “It started when the earth was born.” Her eyes were closed. Her face was golden in the setting...