The air was swollen with music, shouting, and something I could not quite place- a feeling of happiness, but happiness with an edge, a sense of joy that was all the more meaningful because it was so fleeting.

This is not something anyone can teach you. Heartbreak you must learn on your own.

So self-assured were they all by nature that it never occurred to me to doubt that their perfection was predetermined by forces I did not understand. They were all royalty. They were all gods. They were all broken.

I’m sorry,’ I whispered. I didn’t know whether I was sympathizing with her broken heart or apologizing for a family who had had theirs broken, too.

Before that night, I didn't grasp that the shadows that sometimes crossed her face weren't momentary clouds passing in front of the sun. Her deep silences were more than daydreams. And her habit of standing with her arms wrapped around her ribs was a way of holding herself together.I didn't get there must be balance.She couldn't hold so much life, light and joy without also containing their opposites.

Heartache, guilt, loss, grief, these things, too, are monsters.

Even knowing, as I do now, that grace, power, and, yes, love can hide the darkest elements of the human heart, I would do it all again.

We cannot 100 percent know the depth of another person’s heart. We cannot know the whys and whats of his soul.This idea could be sad, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead of rendering human beings powerless, it could render them more compassionate. Knowing that the stranger who just bumped you in the hall or that the awkward loner who sits behind you in class each have a story, makes it easier to chose kindness — again, again, and again.

In the Empire, the Scholars are not allowed to read and, like so many bullies and power-seekers who hide behind ideologies to justify the terrible things they do, their oppressors wear masks. 'An Ember in the Ashes' suggests that such masks (literal or figurative) don’t work. Not forever, anyway. Masks only cover faces. It’s actions that show who we are.

Even knowing everything, I would have chosen the same.It's only in hindsight that we can point, as easily as finding a town on a map, to the moments that shaped us, - the moments when choices between yeses and noes determined the people we become.

Childhood is not all candy stores and recess; it’s frustrations and confusions, too.

The hours were long, but the days were short, and as much as I willed it to never come, the end of summer arrived anyway.

I think inspiration is strongest when I find a balance between observation and participation. You can’t write about what it means to dance by watching from the bleachers.

But if love can be funny and capricious, it can also be strong enough to seem like a sign of insanity.