Quotes from Sara Pennypacker

You may be on your own. But you won't be alone.

Here is a secret good thing: Sometimes I like journal writing at school because I can remind myself of things I might forget when I'm a grown-up. Like that I plan to smoke cigars. And I do not plan to get married. Cigars, yes; husband, no. What if I forget these things?

It is now. But a trip like this? You will find something to fill it with. A truth of your own, that you discover on your own.

Oh, let me tell you, feelings are all dangerous. Love, hope...Ha! Hope! You talk about dangerous, eh? No, you can't avoid them. We all own a beast called anger. It can serve us: many good things come of anger at bad things; many unjust things are made just. But first we all have to figure out how to civilize it" -Vola

A] baseball field was the only place where he felt he was exactly where he was born to be.

It hung between grief and yearning, and it welled from a deep ache for something that Pax could never divine.

The new joy of speed, the urgency of coming night, the hope of reunion with his boy – these things transformed him into something that shot like liquid fire between the trees. Something gravity couldn't touched. Pax could have run forever.

I felt better when I got there. I don't know what it is about a beach - the drifty, fake-coconut scent of suntan lotion, the endless whoosh of little waves lapping the shore, or the way the sun beats down so bright and hot, you feel too baked to think - but when I was there, I could almost forget everything. I floated in the cool water, too tired to actually swim, then flopped down on a towel and read. I read a lot." -Stella

She said it meant that no matter how bad things got, we could always make ourselves new again.

It was an insane, impossible-to-keep promise, of course. But he didn't care. Because when he'd made it, his heart--which, he suddenly understood, had been useless up until now, just killing time pumping his blood around--his heart had lifted right out of his chest, as if it had been reborn as a bird, and was now soaring somwhere near the top of the watchtower. And the view from there was terrific.

Everything was something else before and will be something else after.

He could offer only withness, but nothing else was asked.

And why didn't anyone count those things? "People should tell the truth about what war costs," Vola had said. Weren't those things the costs of war, too?

Because you're right. Bad stuff happens. But the real world is also all the things we do about the bad stuff. We're the real world, too.

Standing fur-to-fur, five foxes wailed, and the call sang of the absence that was theirs alone and of all the losses in the world. And it sang of the joy that remained.

I have twenty acres of trees to care for. And I'm a wood-carver. You thought they were weapons?" Peter

Your heart's like any other muscle, Stella. You have to stretch it out when it cramps up" -Grandma

I don't mind any of the broken things. I like to figure out their stories." -George

Because I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing. That is peace. Eat.

Last night, I saw the moon, and I knew Pax was seeing it right then, too. Do you think that if I feel Pax living, then he's alive?

And with that memory, the anxiety snake struck so hard that it stunned Peter's breath out of him.

Because what if he was like his father, with that threatening kind of anger, the kind that was always simmering, the kind that could boil over at any time and hurt everyone in the way? The apologies afterward never healed the damage. He

I have had not so good of a week.

I'm not angry." But he forced his fists open and counted ten slow breaths, fighting it the way he always did. Because what if he was like his father, with that threatening kind of anger, the kind that was always simmering, the kind that could boil over at any time and hurt everyone in the way? The apologies afterward never healed the damage.