Brooke McKinley, Shades of Gray

"I worry about setting myself up to fail, about letting people down. If I don’t try for a better life, then I don’t have to worry about disappointing anybody. […] You’d be disappointing yourself, though, wouldn’t you, by not taking the chance?"

"It's like this old patchwork quilt my momma used to have... Each piece on that quilt meant something. And some of those pieces were the damn ugliest things you've ever seen... But some of the pieces were so beautiful they almost hurt my eyes to look at when I was a kid... That's the best you can hope for, Danny. That your life turns out like that patchwork quilt. That you can add some bright, sparkling pieces to the dirty, stained ones you have so far. That in the end, the bright patches might take up more space on your quilt than the dark ones."