″ ‘You be as angry as you need to be,’ she said. ‘Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.’ ”
“It is eerily terrifying that there is no sound when a heart breaks. Car accidents end with a bang, falling ends with a thud, even writing makes the scratching sound of pencil against paper. But the sound of a heart breaking is completely silent.”
″You can always change your plan, but only if you have one. I’m a big believer in to-do lists. It helps us break life into small steps. I once put “get tenure” on my to-do list. That was naïve. The most useful to-do list breaks tasks into small steps. It’s like when I encourage Logan to clean his room by picking up one thing at a time.″
“And with a magnificent twisting jump, he trapped the ball in his iron fingers. Yet the wall continued to advance, and...Bump bumped it with a skull-breaking bang.”
“Important things break right away . . . It doesn’t matter what the thing is, but it will break. That’s why, from the beginning, it’s better not to need anything.”
“With an outraged groan he tears the coat off again, splitting the shoulder of it, and hurls it across the room. It strikes against the shelf of Laura’s glass collection, and there is a tinkle of shattering glass. Laura cries out as if wounded. ‘My glass!—menagerie...‘”
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. —Mark Twain”
“Then, like a levee breaking, it all came out: “I took advantage of her. I manipulated her. I called her horrible things. I stole her car once, with a shoelace. I’d leave, for days at a time, without telling her where I’d gone or who I was out with. I must have given her ulcers. When I . . . when I left for college, we didn’t even say goodbye. I just got in my Honda and drove to Boulder. I stole a bottle of her gin from the cabinet on my way out.”
“Now I wished she’d never broken any of her rules. I understood why she held to them so hard. Once you broke the first one, they all broke, one by one, like firecrackers exploding in your face in a parking lot on the Fourth of July.”
His father has left him. It is only when the owner of the bed and breakfast hands him a letter that Alem is given an explanation. Alem’s father admits that because of the political problems in Ethiopia both he and Alem’s mother felt Alem would be safer in London - even though it is breaking their hearts to do this.
“it must be true. After all, he had turned up out of the blue to take the blame for breaking the rattle. Only a best friend would to that. ‘Thanks, Mister Maggi! she said out loud. ‘Like a swing?’ She climbed off and began to push the empty swing to and fro.”
″ ‘Rabbit,’ cried the king, ‘why did you break a law of nature and go running, running, running, in the daytime?’ ‘Oh, King,’ said the rabbit, ‘it was the python’s fault. I was in my house minding my own business when that big snake came in and chased me out.’ ”
“What struck Tom’s youthful imagination was the desperate and lawless character of most of the stories. Was the guard hoaxing him? He couldn’t help hoping that they were true. It’s very odd how almost all English boys love danger. You can get ten to join a game, or climb a tree, or swim a stream, when there’s a chance of breaking their limbs or getting drowned, for one who’ll stay on level ground, or in his depth, or play quoits or bowls.”