Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance

I wasn't doing magic, but I was in it, surrounded on all sides by incredible, beautiful things. It made me feel like a wizard even though I wasn't one, even though I never could be one. p. 306

I was always doing that, apologizing for the way I looked as if the world were somehow suffering from it p. 29

Don't leave anything you can't come back to.

If country music has taught me anything, it's that getting drunk probably isn't the best method of dealing with heartbreak. But I'm a traditionalist" p. 202

Two weeks later, I wore a coat to school for the first time that year. Fall had made its presence known in the form of wet, earthy smells and shivering tree limbs shedding leaves in various shades of exotic cat. I walked to school that morning, listening to the crisp sounds that punctuated each one of my footfalls and the honks of geese flying overhead. I found it strange that there could be so much beauty in the death of all these living things. Maybe it was only beautiful because we knew they would be resurrected next spring. I don't think I would enjoy fall quite as much if I knew there was an eternal winter to follow.

Most girls celebrate their birthdays with friends. I spent mine with a pack of wolves.

Why do you do that?" "Do what?" "Take something beautiful and vandalize it with skepticism?

Don't cry over the same thing twice. Get it all out the first time, even if it's loud and messy. Then it's over.

I feel like...before, I had one way of looking at things, and now, I have a million possibilities, and I get to choose.

The silence in the house was painful, but I had begun to realize that half of it belonged to me.

It was a peaceful, unassuming life scored by birds in the morning and crickets in the evening, and because it was precious to us, we handled it with care.

I told him some of my best stories: the one about the sewer and the train tracks and the neighbor's dogs. Weylyn seemed unimpressed. "What? You got something better?" Weylyn smiled, "I was young once, too.

Actually, it’s kind of a love story.

The hillside was thick with trees, the same hill we had left barren the day before.

My wolf brothers and sisters have a saying (or a howl) that goes, "Don't leave anything you can't come back to." I know I can come back here and I will be welcomed, and that brings me more comfort than anything else in this world.