Ann Aguirre

Because it takes more courage to heal the world's hurts than to inflict them.

I'll always want him. Until every sun goes dark in every sky, until I am nothing more than long-forgotten cosmic dust, I will want him. And even then I suspect my particles will long for his.

Lessons in magic from a mysterious boy who belonged to a hidden Ferisher court called the Wild _ I couldn't think of anything that would horrify my parents more. Therefore, the proposition became exponentially more enticing.

You think a man doesn't fall down, son? A real man falls down nine times and gets up ten. You think real men don't get scared? We do, all the time, especially when the people we love can be taken away from us. The key to manhood is being there, every morning when she wakes up, every night before she goes to bed. That's what a man does. It has nothing to do with how good you are with some shiny knives. And if you let her do this thing alone, then by God_

I knew exactly how he felt because I had walked in his shoes, wary and distrustful, unable to believe anybody could care about me without asking for something in return.

Pull yourself together. People among the living still need your help, and I haven't given you permission to quit.

You can lie to yourself about all kinds of things. Until you can't, anymore. Until reality pounds a hole through your fantasy castle and the reality check must be cashed in.

More than most, I know the pain of surviving.

So I make no effort to hide my pain. I don__ ever put it all on display like this__ut for today and all the rest of the days of the trial, I must. My every flinch, every flicker of pain, will bemagnified a hundred times over, then dissected by the pundits and talking heads. But I__ told it__ necessary; the world needs to see me vulnerable and wounded. I cannot appear not to care or to lack remorse, but that removes a crucial component of my self- defense mechanism and leaves me bleeding for all the world to see. I suppose that__ rather the point.

What you said about the sweetest pain? That fits us.

We stand a professional distance apart, as if I can__ feel his pain screaming in my head. Mine amplifies his; they share a joint sound__hat of glass breaking__ntil they swell to a crescendo that deafens.

For I need this scar over my heart to remind me. Crazy as it sounds, if I can bear the wound on my body, it lessens what I must carry on my soul. How he knew that about me, I cannot fathom.

. . . and I don__ expect him to suborn his life into mine any more than I would change my dreams for him. We__e not one soul, one being, however much we love each other.

He is not the same person as when wemet, but . . . neither am I. Time has refined us, but instead of pushing us apart, we__e closer than ever.

We're broken in complementary ways, thus rendering our damage comprehensible to each other.

I remember when I was a kid, I could never find anything positive about chubby girls. If a girl was pudgy in books, she wasn't okay. She couldn't be happy or make friends unless she lost weight.

Not to wish too hard for a shift in circumstances since it never happens as you imagine.

Realistically, it's a risk, I suppose, but in this day and age, you almost have to choose between freedom, which can devolve into chaos, and security, which can become a pair of shackles.