you're as old as you feel.

What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell

you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and

seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you

wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't.

You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And

you don't feel eleven at all. You feel like you're still ten. And you are --

underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that's the part of

you that's still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your

mama's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five.

And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like

if you're three, and that's okay. 

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings

inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the

other, each year inside the next one. That's how being eleven years old is.

Don't criticize what you can't understand

And then I felt sad because I realized that once people
are broken in certain ways, it may take forever to fix.
and this is something nobody ever tells you when you
are young and it never fails to surprise you as you
grow older and see the people in your life break one by
one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.

Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met. Maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.