“What if a puppet could cut its own strings, and in that act of defiance and strength of will become truly alive? Become is own puppetmaster?”

Anger and hatred, when left unfed, bleed away like air from a punctured tire, over time and days and years. Forgiveness is stealth.

This is why I forgive, but I don’t forget. When you forget someone, the forgiveness doesn’t mean anything anymore.

What was the opposite of linkage blindness? What described being certain of something without any kind of evidence?…The term was faith.

You can’t rely on love. Love will let you down every time. Every. Single. Time. I don’t love Jecca. I don’t love Fanboy. But… God, the buts in life will kill you absolutely every time, won’t they. I don’t love. But I need. I can admit that to myself.

Sometimes hope could be the most frightening thing in the world.

I suddenly realize that I’m naked, which shouldn’t bother me since it’s the phone, but for some reason it does. “How’s it hanging?” Kyra asks and now I think I’m blushing. It’s just an expression, but jeez!

…She’s not buying [the lie], but there’s nothing else on the shelves.

See, forgiveness doesn’t happen all at once. It’s not an event – it’s a process.

And it’s true. It’s so true. All those years of loving Zik because he never asked about Eve… I never realized, I never understood. It was his job as my best friend not to ask. But it was my job as his best friend to tell him without being asked.

A river of images and thoughts and feelings, dirtied and polluted so that no one could drink from it without gagging.

. . . but there’s a restraining order in place.’ She speaks slowly, choosing her words carefully. ‘I’m not supposed to be this close to you.’ You were never supposed to be this close to me,’ I say, and I have no idea why.

(Man, I wish life had emoticons, you know? So that when your dad pisses you off you could like click a mental button or something and just show him one of those rolleyes. That would rock) Anyway.

And I think of nothing. I think of nothing but Rachel. What happens next is pure magic, and is for us and us alone.

He moved to run a hand through her cornrows, then pulled back remembering the one time he’s tried that-Connie had lectured him on the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not touch thy black girlfriend’s hair. Ever.

And my parents made me want i am. So what? We get stuff from our parents, but we also get stuff from the world around us. From people around us. And at the end of the day, we’re us.

At the end of the day, it’s a series of individual challenges played out against a team defense. It’s a psersonal test every time I step into the batter’s box: Can I do better than the last time? And that’s why I love it.

I don’t tan on my upper thighs, so when I first wore those [ cut-off jean short shorts] I look like I was walking on two cans of milk.

NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world’s premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.

The number one killer of children in Rwanda is malaria. Since the United States of America stood up and working with Rwandans, we have been able to cut those deaths by two-thirds.

You don’t learn knife skills at cooking school, because they give you only six onions and no matter how hard you focus on those six onions there are only six, and you’re not going to learn as much as when you cut up a hundred.

The suburb is a place where someone cuts down all the trees to build houses, and then names the streets after the trees.

Yeah, I’m obnoxious, yeah, I cut people off, yeah, I’m rude. You know why? Because you’re busy.

There is no short cut to a place worth going.

We believe that there is one economic lesson which our twentieth century experience has demonstrated conclusively-that America can no more survive and grow without big business than it can survive and grow without small business…. the two are interdependent.