Downsiders

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.

My grandmother used to say that twisting paths always cross again," he told her. "And whose paths are more twisted than ours?

Perhaps that is the greatest crime of conquest--that a civilization is denied the right to evolve beyond its own embarrassment.

...New Beginning to the same old story

Perhaps, thought Talon, there was a path in between. A way to shed their ignorance without losing their souls.

People would cheer throw confetti and then go about breaking the resolutions they had made only moments before.

I will be keeper of your secret," Talon told the silent grave of the forgotten inventor. "I will be the one who remembers why we forget.

You think just because we got stars up here we can wish on 'em and make everything better

Anyway, don't they have girls your age down there?" Talon shrugged. "Yeah...but none of them ever sprayed me with eye-poison.

while an adult could rarely be universally loved, everyone could love the right kid.

It is human nature to take the most magical of worlds for granted, turning each one into a blank canvas upon which to paint the lives of those who would live there. Only an outsider can see a world's wonders for what they truly are.

To get the man off her back, she finally looked out of her window. She thought she would find patchwork farmlands, but they were already above the suburban sprawl that surrounded the city. It was twilight—the sky was full of color, but she didn't look up. She could only look to the ground, where streetlights were already beginning to come on. To Lindsay, it looked like a grid of computer chips, stretching out for miles and miles. So many people, she thought. Lindsay could count on a single hand the people who really cared about her. And now, outside her 747 window, was a brutal reminder of how many people didn't.