“You don’t need to doubt yourself – plenty of people will do that for free!”

“Everyone wanted to be the best. Best student. Best servant. Best Christian. They got caught up in it, pressing and pushing until they forgot whom it was they were trying to please.”

“Letting go isn’t giving up. It’s trusting God to do whatever He has to do.”

“The world cracks open for those willing to take a risk.”

“I finally felt myself lifted definitively away on the winds of adventure toward worlds I envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations I imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be.”

“I’m done playing games, Ella. No other girls exist in the world for me. If you see me talking to one, know that I’m talking about you. If you see me walking next to someone, I’m wishing it was you … You’re the only one for me.”

“Aim at nothing, and you get nowhere. Aim at something, and even in long odds you often get closer than you would otherwise.”

“It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history.”