"My artwork isn't evolving, it's deconstructing, and I don't know why."

"Wars have a way reinventing people. And making too many things disappear.-Sonia."

"Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down."

"Luck, however, is too dumb to remain consistent."

"Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two."

"Happiness is not a state of being. Happiness is a vector, it is movement."

"The fear of not living is a deep, abiding dread of watching your own potential decompose into irredeemable disappointment when 'should be' gets crushed by what is. Sometimes I think it would be easier to die than to face that, because 'what could have been' is much more highly regarded than 'what should have been.' Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug."

"I'm evolving, is the thing; I'm a god becoming a constellation.''The constellations are mostly demigods,' I point out. 'And they didn't get to be constellations until after they died.'He laughs at that, and says, 'Death is a small sacrifice to become immortal."

"It's kind of like religion. It gives us comfort to believe we have defined something that is, by its very nature, indefinable. As to whether or not we've gotten it right, well, it's all a matter of faith."

"I'm sure my parents must be proud. Or horrified. Or are bitterly arguing about whether they're proud or horrified, and have already hired lawyers to resolve the dispute. -Hayden Upchurch."

"While it's five in the morning here, it's also five in the evening somewhere in China-proving that incompatible truths make perfect sense when seen with global perspective."

"Hole..." He grips Risa's hand tighter. "Hole, Risa, hole..." And she smiles "Yes, Connor," she says. "You're whole. You're finally whole."

"So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?"

"First rule of motherhood, dearie: men are screw-ups. Learn it now and you'll be a whole lot happier."

"The question wasn't whether or not I cared about him; the question was, how much? I'm glad Tennyson didn't ask that, because then I'd have to ask myself; and I already knew the answer. I cared far more than was safe."

"She was deemed an unfit mother, in spite of the fact that she goes to the gym every day,' Hal once told me. . . .Beautiful people are often forgiven for many things--and maybe she's gotten through life that way, but I don't forgive her for anything--and I don't even know what awful things she's done other than showing a lack of parental fitness."

"Cities are never random. No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem. In fact, a city is nothing more than a solution to a problem, that in turn creates more problems that need more solutions, until towers rise, roads widen, bridges are built, and millions of people are caught up in a mad race to feed the problem-solving, problem-creating frenzy."

"We'll never be ready. So I guess that means we're as ready as we'll ever be."

"Hope can be bruised and battered. It can be forced underground and even rendered unconscious, but hope cannot be killed."

"On a hairpin turn, above the dead forest, on no day in particular, a white Toyota crashed into a black Mercedes, for a moment blending into a blur of gray."

"This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds."

"Dreams can twist your emotions like no reality can."

"Today he failed to change the world. As for tomorrow, who can tell?"

"Walls don't fall without effort."

"When you drop a pebble into a pond, ripples spread out, changing all the water in the pool. The ripples hit the shore and rebound, bumping into one another, breaking each other apart. In some small way, the pond is never the same again."

"Hayden shouts, "To the new Teen Uprising!"

"I begin to wonder if David was like me. Seeing monsters everywhere and realizing there aren't enough slingshots in the world to get rid of them."

"I'm against solutions that are worse than the problem. Like old women who want their hair dyed the color of shoe polish to hide the gray."

"He's a conundrum- and there's still a piece missing from the puzzle." Whatever that piece was, there was a part of me telling me not to get involved- that it was too much to handle. That you shouldn't go out on a limb unless you're absolutely sure the limb can support your weight."

"We're this big melting pot, but someone turned up the heat too high, and the stew started to burn. Gangs, crime, fights, and fear are now a regular part of our local stew."

"How do you judge the brightness of a light when you're the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts."

"Maybe we're standing like coins on the edge?"Allie considered this. "Meaning?""Meaning, we might be able to shake things up a little, and find a way to come up heads.""Or tails," suggested."

"We are, however, creatures of containment. We want all things in life packed into boxes that we can label. But just because we have the ability to label it, doesn't mean we really know what's in the box.It's kind of religion. It gives us comfort to believe we have defined something that is, by its very nature, indefinable. As to whether or not we've gotten it right, well, it's all a matter of faith."

"And," added Mikey. "she's my sister."The others looked at him for a moment, and broke out laughing."Yeah, yeah," Squirrel scoffed, "and the McGill is my cousin."Now Allie burst out laughing, which made Mikey more annoyed."If the McGill was your cousin," Mikey said, "I can guarantee he'd disown you."

"Elasticity is a fundamental principle of perception."

"I can't destroy things so beautiful.""Time will destroy them if you don't. Time destroys everything. But if you destroy them, it will mean something."

"Those eyes of his just look up at me, pupils dilated in the diffused lights of the room. Wide, black pools, seeking out galaxies."

"And you know the darkness beyond despair, just as intimately as you know the soaring heights. Because in this and all universes, there is balance. You can't have the one without facing the other. And sometimes you think you can take it because the joy is worth the despair, and sometimes you know you can't take it and how did you ever think you could? And there is the dance; strength and weakness, confidence and desolation."

"Lethargy. It's a word I know, because it's in one of my father's favorite expressions. Lethargy breeds lethargy. It means the more you lie around doing nothing, the more you want to lie around doing nothing. Your limbs and your mind feel so heavy that it becomes a major effort just to lift your arm to channel surf."

"Hope in the shadow of fear is the world's most powerful motivator."