The most important thing is to be whatever you are without shame.

Somehow, we both got carried away. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but before long, I knew nothing was ever going to be the same.

I’m too old to be ignorant as I am.” –Twelve-year-old Gabriella to the general, who does not want her to know about Emmett Till and the world’s brutality.

Last night I dreamt Moses and I were rowing underwater.We could breathe and talk to one another.We rowed past schools of fish and sea anemones and Moses named them for me.”—Jules Finn

I learned that adults were not soaring gods, but rather back-yard birds with broken wingtips.When you are thirteen, about to free-fall into the real world, discovering the broken wingtips is terrifying.

Marika could feel herself cocking the trigger of a loaded gun and pointing it at herself, because the truth could be too shocking a revelation, something that would shake their lives to the core… but...

The Fall will always be yours and mine…

I was not a believer in instalove. So said the rational part of my brain.

Stand still while I yell at you.

His smile is beautiful. It’s the kind of smile that can take away all nervousness and tension in a room, no matter how big. I have no choice but to smile back.

It’s in a can. It’s good forever.

[…] He plays the guitar so well, you wouldn’t believe it. But he doesn’t have a band. And he doesn’t try really hard to get one. He mostly plays alone in his room instead. That’s...

He wanted revenge and I knew he would not stop until he got it. I had to hope he would run out of fuel.

Perhaps love doesn’t divert sound judgment.

Resting on the roots of this old oak I lean back against his knotted trunk, shine my granny smith on my sleeve And ponder the days…

Something, somewhere, knows what’s best for me and promises to keep sending me people and experiences to light my way as long as I live in gratitude and keep paying attention to the signs.

If I had an .MP3 of your heartbeat… I might actually get some sleep.

The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It’s as if someone has dumped rubies...

Plus, I happened to be a history nerd. Why else would I be interested in a guy born in the year 519?

Have you ever noticed how as an adult, all the bright colors go out of your life? Now that I’m not a kid anymore, things always look gray, like a clothesline draped with laundry that’s...

There exists an oasis where inspiration bursts forth like black gold from the fertile loam and every odd bellbird chirps a melody worth remembering. There’s no bloody map or nautical chart that can deliver you...

The principles of storytelling do not change. Going home. Coming of age. Sin and redemption. The hero. The journey, The power of love. They are hardwired into us, just like our taste buds process sweet,...

No. Not thateither. But it makes it hard for me to keep my distance. You’re stunning. Inside and out,” he claimed, with chocolatey eyes that said he meant every word.

For the first time I realized adults could back themselves into corners so remote that love, or its memory, could no longer reach them.

He begins to sing to her, very softly, almost not singing at all, just a whisper of a tune. He spins out the tune like it is a tale he is telling her, until he...

I really believe that there is an invisible red thread tied between him and me, and that it has stretched and tangled for years — across oceans and lifetimes. I know that it won’t break...

We make people into Gods, desperate that they never leave us and hopeful that someday, if we ever deserve it, maybe they’ll love us back even half way.

I work in a restaurant in an airport in Taiwan. I am eighteen years old and I don’t like my job because everyone gets on planes and leaves. And I want to leave too.

They stood in the courtyard of Swangard Palace, too cold to be comfortable despite the sun, and they looked fully on one another, knowing that they were friends, and would always be.A lot of water...

Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made...

Perhaps that was the point; life, if you did it right, meant learning and changing. If you didn’t, you died- or stopped growing – which amounted to more or less the same thing. So I...

At times, it felt so odd being with a man in such an intimate way who was not my husband.

Do you ever wear leather?” the guy asks.”What?””Leather. Do you like leather?””It doesn’t exactly wipe me out.””I like to see boys in leather.”I look at him cool. “Okay,” I say, “what is it you want...

But for a long time, and probably far too long, I had a secret wish: the adolescently romantic idea that there was someone out there for me; someone I hadn’t met yet who would ask...

It’s a neighborhood where every dad has at least one job and where parents often end conversations with the words: no guts, no glory.

Her heart was telling her to trust him, but it wouldn’t be the first time that that foolish muscle, there in the middle of her chest, had betrayed her.

He looked at me, that first day, like he had just found something he’d lost a thousand years ago.

What can I do?” his gaze on me was intense, like I was some sort of love guru or something. I almost laughed out loud at how unqualified I was for that position.

You deserved it.

Both the two of us knew it. We watched the lie go up big and slow between us, then it burst like a spit bubble. They always burst before too long.

To prove to [her friend, Swedish diplomat Count] Gyllenborg that she was not superficial, Catherine composed an essay about herself, “so that he would see whether I knew myself or not.” The next day, she...

Creativity is the catalyst to the future.

And the One will take the Sword of the Western Sun and triumph over the enemy with boldness and insight. The arm of the One is steady and heads will roll. Snow Giants will battle

94 was a good year to be twelve. Star Wars still had two more years as Box Office King, cartoons were still hand-drawn, and the Disney “D” still looked like a backwards “G.” Words like...

Perhaps friendship doesn’t divert sound judgment.

This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt...

I met a boy whose eyes showed me that the past, present and future were all the same thing.

In the old days, when travelers would get lost, they would follow the stars and I love that idea. I wish that I could rely on something as simple and magnificent as a star for...

Zachary smiles, and I wonder if he’s felling different. Because standing out here waist deep in Gossimer Lake, next to my best friend, I’m feeling different-light and good and maybe even holy.

If I were to lock you up in a dungeon, I guarantee you would not be bored.