We Are Only An Instant, That's True.

Burn Me. Drown Me. Tell Me Lies. I Will Still Be Who I Am.

Before She Realized He Was Next To Her, He Had Placed His Hands Over Hers On The Countertop, Then Hooped His Fingers Through Hers. Gretel Looked Up At Him, So Startled She Might As Well Have Been Shot. 'i Just Wanted To Wake You Up', He Said. Which Is Exactly What He Did. One Look At Him And Her Heart Was Racing. One Look, And Whatever Had Been Before Was All Over.

Everything We Knew Condemned Us, And Our Questioning Condemned Us Most Of All. Knowledge Was The Way Of Our People, And Knowledge Was Dangerous. It Was The First Thing That Freed You And The Thing That Put You In Peril. It Was The Key To The Ten Gates. I Saw Them Clearly Now, Each And Every One, The Gates That Were There For Me. Ashes, Bones, Grass, Heart, Stone, Love, Sorrow, Blood, Earth, Sky.

I Can't Really Work On More Than One Thing At A Time

In The Darkest Hour Of Winter, When The Starlings Had All Flown Away, Gretel Samuelson Fell In Love. It Happened The Way Things Are Never Supposed To Happen In Real Life, Like A Sledgehammer, Like A Bolt From Out Of The Blue. One Minute She Was A Seventeen Year-old Senior In High School Waiting For A Sicilian Pizza To Go; The Next One She Was Someone Whose Whole World Had Exploded, Leaving Her Adrift In The Milky Way, So Far From Earth She Was Walking On Stars.