I don’t care if there are cracks in us, we are still us. We don’t have to be perfect to be right.
Pine Sap said once that he would rather die than see Tiger Lily tamed. I guess Tiger Lily felt the same way with Peter, because she stayed behind.
Sometimes Peter and Tiger Lily fought. A fight between them looked like this: Peter, head swirling with anger, waving his arms around and expressing five thoughts at once about why she was wrong and he was right; Tiger Lily, curling up inside like a rock, stone-faced, listening but at the same time refusing to hear. She hated his need to always win and he hated her coldness during their arguments.
It’s shocking, isn’t it, that a kiss could have led to something so big and violent and full of light as a human being? It makes me dizzy to think of all the things that start that way. Whole families, whole countries, whole worlds. Isn’t it strange how a whole life can begin with a little spark?
Because I think people must be the same everywhere. Only these people are in my bones.
We are just stardust after all.
She thought of all the things she’d forgotten to be scared of.
It was almost as if he was giving her his silence, so that all of her anger had a place to go.
This is no place for anyone with a heart.
Sitting there, all delicate and dreamy, she looked as if someone had only given half a life to her.
I think we carry home on our backs.
I heard now the fear in their brightness. It trickled along underneath them like a secret spring.
I like to think that nothing’s final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don’t, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I’ll see you sometime again, even if it’s not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand.
I’m nothing to you, am I’ Peter said once in a particularly intense arguement about where to find wild turnips. To these kinds of accusations, Tiger Lily would reply that he was trying to make her into his little chicken, and that she would never be anyone’s ’little obedient chicken.
I think people everywhere are the same. Only these people are my bones.
Manatees are real, mermaids aren’t. Rhinoceroses exist and sea monsters don’t. There are no more sea serpents guarding deadly whirlpools. There are pirates, yes, but there is nothing romantic about them. The rest is all stories, and stories have been put in their place.
Something about you makes me feel like I can tell you things like that. You’re so still. It’s like, you’ll just hear it.” He smiled wryly. “I can’t even hear what I’m thinking most of the time,” he said, his brow wrinkling. “My brain’s noisy.
I’ve made a discovery, and it’s that grief isn’t like sadness at all. Sadness is only something that’s part of you. Grief becomes you, it wraps you up and changes you and makes everything – every little thing – different than it was before. I remember the me before we got the telegram saying he was gone, but it’s like I’m remembering someone else. It feels like an earthquake has gone through me...
Manhattan can be beautiful, Ellis, if you are willing to see it and not compare it to what you loved before.
From above, the world looks orderly. That is one of the primary benefits of having wings. Being high shapes everything below into peaceful patterns. And even though you know there is chaos below, messiness everywhere, it is reassuring to sometimes think that it all eventually sorts itself out into something that looks elegant.