*Spoiler alert...kind of: I'm not revealing any plot here, but I did want to capture several favorite passages. This well-timed read caught me in a vulnerable and available space and captured so much of what I've felt and experienced in a hauntingly accurate way.

"But the good thing about ideas is that they grow other ideas."

"All he could feel, all he had felt since the monster revealed itself, was a growing disappointment. Because this wasn't the monster he was expecting. 'So come and get me then,' he said."

"It tasted as unhappy as it looked."
     
"Conor wasn't stupid. When they'd had the 'little talk' the next day, he knew what his mum had done and why she had done it. But that didn't take away from how much fun that night had been. How hard they'd laughed. How anything had seemed possible. How anything good could have happened to them right then and there and they wouldn't have been surprised."

"The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with skepticism."

"There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between."

"For a moment, all Conor could see was sudden thunderstorms on the way, could feel them ready to explode in the sky and through his body and out of his fists. For a moment, he felt as if he could grab hold of the very air and twist it around...."

"And people began to live on earth rather than within it."

"The parson, though, what was he? He was nothing. Belief is half of all healing. Belief is the cure, belief in the future that awaits. And here was a man who lived on belief, but who sacrificed it at the first challenge, right when he needed it most. He believed selfishly and fearfully."

"Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn't expect."

"As incredible as it seemed, time kept moving forward for the rest of the world. The rest of the world wasn't waiting."

"'You be as angry as you need to be,' she said. 'Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, nor your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.' .... 'And if, one day,' she said really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have you to know, Conor, you have to know that it was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud. All right?'"

"'You must speak the truth and you must speak it now.... Say it. You must.'
'It'll kill me if I do,' he gasped.
'It will kill you if you do not,' the monster said. 'You must say it.'"

"And the fire in Conor's chest suddenly blazed, suddenly burned like it would eat him alive. It was the truth, he knew it was. A moan started in his throat, a moan that rose into a cry and then a loud wordless yell and he opened his mouth and the fire came blazing out, blazing out to consume everything, bursting over the blackness, over the yew tree, setting it ablaze along with the rest of the world, burning it back as Conor yelled and yelled, and yelled in pain and grief - And he spoke the words. He spoke the truth."

"Conor's grief was a physical thing, gripping him like a clamp, clenching him tight as a muscle. He could barely breathe from the sheer effort of it, and he sank to the ground again, wishing it would just take him once and for all."

"The answer it that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times a day....Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.
'But how do you fight it?' Conor asked, his voice rough. 'How do you fight all the different stuff inside?'
'By speaking the truth,' the most said. 'As you spoke it just now.'"

"'You do not write your life with words,' the monster said. 'You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.' There was a long silence as Conor re-caught his breath.
'So what do I do?' he finally asked.
'You do what you did just now,' the monster said. 'You speak the truth.'
'That's it?'
'You think it is easy?' The monster raised two enormous eyebrows. 'You were willing to die rather than speak it.'
Conor looked down at his hands, finally unclenching them. 'Because what I thought was so wrong.'
'It was not wrong,' the monster said, 'It was only a thought, one of a million. It was not an action.'"

"'If you speak the truth,' the monster whispered in his ear, 'you will be able to face whatever comes.'"