Bird

That's one of the things about adults: the most important rules to keep are the ones they never tell you and the ones they get the angriest about if you break.

If you give up too much of yourself, too fast, then someone can just up and take it away.

It's almost as if we're afraid of words. They hang in the air, unspoken, and then seeing that they're not going to be used, they shrivel and die.

Who were these people? Where was all this joy, and where does joy go when it leaves your family? Does it go into someone else's family, soak into the earth, or does it dissolve away like your breath in the winter? And if it doesn't leave like this, then why isn't there any left for me?

Most people can't see what's in front of them if they don't know what they're looking for. But once you know what you're looking for, you wonder how you didn't see it.

It just made me wonder just how much we're all connected, how we touch each other without even knowing it. And when we're lucky, we do.

I don't like crying in front of people because it shows them the holes that you have on the inside. I guess with all the crying I'd been doing lately, I had more holes than I thought.

I realized that places in many ways are like people: they think about you when you're gone, wait for you to come back, and rejoice when you do.

Grandpa stopped speaking the day he killed my brother, John.

Joy is like a child, I realized, as I picked at the bark by my thigh. You feed it or it dies.

I wasn't sure which was worse, slicing into someone with silence or with words.

The dilemma: Which is worse, opening your mouth only to burst into tears, or remaining silent and absorbing their blame?

How can trying to make someone understand take more than a lifetime, and someone else less than an instant?

All I do know is that special things happen in special places, and sometimes mysteries are just that, But really, special places are everywhere. I think a place can be special simply because it is, it was special since the end of time, and will be until the end of time, like the cliff. And other times, a place can be special because of what we do when we're there.

Sure am. I’m adopted. Raised by white people. It’s not as bad as it sounds.

As Dad says, there are no coincidences in life. Which is a fancy way of saying that when things are meant to happen, no matter how mysterious or crazy or impossible, they're going to happen.