Sometimes you don't know what you need until it's gone

The things you think about when you're a hair's breath away from getting yourself killed.

They call it the drowning instinct. It's when drowning doesn't look like drowning. (pg. 241)

Follow your heart. Just don't get lost.

What's the point of not taking chances? I don't know if I could stand living my whole life afraid.

The grief in her green eyes slips then hardens and, for an instant, Pendleton sees the woman she has become and has no right being, not at sixteen.

Everybody breaks sooner or later, Bob. Anyone can drown. Sometimes you see it. Most often, you don’t because the body protects and the skin hides, so drowning doesn’t look like drowning and some people scar so nicely. Take it from an expert.

My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work.

She's got the kind of ethereal, unselfconscious beauty some young girls possess that breaks your heart. Or theirs.

As the dog sprinted back, Jack said to the girl, Sweetheart,honey, why do you have to be so hateful? Why not? Ellie said. It's not like being good ever got me anywhere.

Why can't you like me? he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and electric roil of those cold, black shadows. Why can't you like me just a little? She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance. Instead, he kissed her.

This is a fairy tale with teeth and claws.