"Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss...." He turned to me. "But every once in a while, you find someone who's iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare."

"It's easy to look back and see it, and it's easy to give the advice. But the sad fact is, most people don't look beneath the surface until it's too late."

"If you really want things to change, you have to get involved. Little strokes fell big oaks, you know."

"I daydreamed a lot about the sycamore tree, too, which at first I thought was because I was feeling melancholy. But then I remembered how my mother had called the sycamore a testimony yo endurance. It had survuvced being damaged as a sapling. It had grown. Other people thought it was ugly, but I never had. Maybe it was all how you looked at it. Maybe there were things I saw as ugly that other people thought were beautiful."