Everybody's different, and everybody thinks everybody else is the same and they're the only one different.

'Things usually work out in the end.'
'What if they don't?'
'That just means you haven't come to the end yet.'

One time I saw a Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight.
Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty."

Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.

Bails?
Yeah?
Is it so dull being dead?
It was, not anymore.
What changed?
I stopped peering over the ledge...
What do you do now?
It's hard to explain - it's like swimming,
but not in water, in light.
Who do you swim With?
Mostly you and Toby, Gram and Big,
with Mom, too, sometimes.
How come I don't know it?
But you do, don't you?
I Guess, like all those days we spent
at Flying Man's?
Exactly, only brighter.

All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.

It's such a colossal effort not to be haunted by what's lost, but to be enchanted by what was.

“The sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.”

I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever.
You can tell your story any way you damn well please.
It's your solo.

I imagine you
up there
not like a cloud or a bird or a star
but like a mother,
except one who lives in the sky
who doesn't make a fuss
about gravity
who just goes about her business
drifting around with the wind.

... Remember with your heart. Go back, go back, and go back. The skies of this world were always meant to have dragons. When they are not here, humans miss them. Some never think of them, of course. But some children, from the time they are small, they look up at a blue summer sky and watch for something that never comes. Because they know. Something that was supposed to be there faded and vanished.

From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.

"Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry ... have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere--be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one piece of living is ever lost."

Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead of smacked.

To have faith is to have wings.

I am the best there ever was!

Second to the right, and straight on till morning.

I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!

If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!

Oh, the cleverness of me!