Outrun the Moon

Maybe sorrow and its opposite, happiness, are like dark and light. One can’t exist without the other. And those moments of overlap are like when the moon and the sun share the same sky. A

I scold the worries away. As Ma likes to say, you cannot control the wind, but you can control your sails.

It is like the moon. We can see it differently by climbing a mountain, but we cannot outrun it. As it should be.

Some parents bring their children up and, I suppose, others let them down.

While I might not have received a full St. Clare’s education, somehow I picked up something better. Friends who care enough to knock on your pumpkin and make sure you haven’t gone mushy inside.

Even if I did climb to the top of that mountain one day, people will never stop seeing my color first, before me.

I never said you didn't have a heart. But it would be nice if it beat every now and then.

How easily life can end on a misunderstanding. How fragile we all are, like spider silk on a branch of thorns. I

Their deaths might leave a hole in our hearts as deep as the ocean, but it is only because we are as deep as the ocean, and our capacity to love is as high as the sky. The earthquake took much from us. But there is much we can take from it as well

When a law isn't just, I believe it's okay to disobey it. In fact, I believe we are morally obliged to disobey it.

People are like boats, always coming and going. Sometimes never returning. Now that his boat has sailed, the sea is empty for me.

I never backed down from a challenge before, and I don't intend to start today.

We have the same dirt under our shoes as they do.

The poor man, whose intentions were so quickly imagined for him because of the way the light hits his skin.

It amazes me that even when the world is going to hell in a handcart, there’s still beauty in the fringes. Francesca

As for Headmistress Crouch, I pegged her as the type who wouldn't have a mate, either because of her exacting standards, or because she ate him for dinner.

Living people are a dying breed.

Don't you get too greedy, Death. You already have taken more than your fair share today. You can't have me yet.

I misjudge and our teeth collide, but he gently corrects course instead of pulling away. When he kisses me back, all the hurt inside me floats to the surface and somehow drains away. It makes me want to laugh.

Though grammatically perfect, a French accent stretches his English out of shape.

You may no longer be in school, but you must never stop learning. We need to be as smart as the white ghosts.

A part of me understands the need to keep order, but another part worries that we are being led to fear the wrong things. It's just like Chinatown and all the laws passed to contain us. We were never the enemy. The enemy was our country's own fear.

No, the key to wealth was opportunity. And if opportunity didn't come knocking than Mrs. Lowry says you must build your own door.

I find the company of a book much more interesting

Sometimes the only way to move forward is to be pushed by someone who cares

In one neighborhood where all are welcome. We all have one feature in common: an outlook. It is forged by the memory of what we went through and shaped by the hope that we will persevere. It is as indelible as a footprint on cement.

How fine the line is between hilarity and grief.

Imagine, if everyone picked up a few bricks and put them back where they’re supposed to be, we’d have this city rebuilt in no time.

The closer I am to someone’s grief, the closer I feel to my own. And that is a place with no doors and no windows.

Our success is determined not by external forces, but how we react to them.