Alana

“I wished I was old. I was tired of being so young, so stupidly knowing, so stupidly forgetful. I was tired of having to be anything at all. I felt like the internet, full of every kind of information but none of it mattering more than any of it, and all of its little links like thin white roots on a broken plant dug out of the soil, lying drying on its side. And whenever I tried to access myself, whenever I’d try to click on me, try to go any deeper when it can to the meaning of ‘I’, I mean deeper than a single fast-loading page on Facebook or MySpace, it was as if I knew that one morning I’d wake up and try to log on to find that not even _that_ version of ‘I’ existed any more, because the servers all over the world were all down. And that’s how rootless. And that’s how fragile. And what would poor Anthea do then, poor thing?”
― Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy

“We have to hope, Daniel was saying, that the people who love us and who know us a little bit will in the end have seen us truly. In the end, not much else matters.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

“See that tree?" It was a stubby cypress tree, all bent and twisted.

"Yeah, I see it."

"It's my favorite tree."

"It's not that great a tree," I said.

"That's it. That's exactly it. It's like me. The wind beat the holy crap out of it when it was just a sapling. Never could straighten itself out again." He sort of smiled at me. "But, Zach, it didn't die." He looked like maybe he wanted to cry. But he didn't. "It's alive."

"Maybe it should have just given up."

"That tree didn't know how to do that. It only knew how to live. Crooked. Bent. Taller trees dwarfing it even more. It just wanted to live. I named it, you know?"

He was waiting for me to ask what he'd named it--but I decided I didn't want to ask.

"Zach," he whispered. "The tree's name is Zach."[p. 135]”
― Benjamin Alire Saenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster