MESSENGER - LOIS LOWRY

Messenger - Pg 158

   After the thorny branches had shredded her dress, they had reached for her legs as night fell, and now he could see that she was terribly lacerated. The wounds were deep, and he could see exposed muscles and tendons glisten yellow and pink in a devastating kind of beauty where the ragged flesh gaped open.

Messenger - Pg 129

   He could see, too, that she was accustomed to her stick and twisted leg. A lifetime of walking in that way had made it, as she had pointed out, part of her. It was who she was. To become a fast-striding Kira with two straight legs would have been to become a different person. This was not a journey Matty could undertake with a stranger.

Messenger - Pg 117

   He watched, his eyes heavy with exhaustion, as she took his bowl to the sink, placed it there, and then, leaning on her stick, gathered some stakes from a shelf, and a ball of twine. With her garden tools she turned to go outdoors. The twisted foot dragged in its familiar way. He had known everything about Kira for so long: her smile, her voice, her merry optimism, the amazing strength and skill of her hands, and the burden of her useless leg.
   I must tell you this, Matty thought before he slept. I can fix you.

Messenger - Pg 102

   To his surprise, Jean kissed him. SO often in the past, teasing, she had said she would, one day. Now she did, and it was a quick and fragrant touch  to his lips that gave him courage and, even before he started out, made him yearn to come back home.

Messenger - Pg 71

   When would he ever learn to stop saying "Look" to a man who had no eyes?

Messenger - Pg 48

   In the past, new ones had mostly arrived alone or in pairs, but now they seemed to come in groups: whole families, often, looking tired, for they had for they had come great distances, and frightened, because they had left fearsome things behind and usually their escape had been dangerous and terrifying. But always they were hopeful, too, and clearly relieved to be greeted by the smiles. The people of Village prided themselves on the welcome, many of them leaving their regular work to go and be part of it.
   Frequently the new ones were damaged. They hobbled on canes or were ill. Sometimes they were disfigured by wounds or simply because they had been born that way. Some were orphans. All of them were welcomed.

Messenger - Pg 25

   At first, having found his way to Village, he had thought his own brutal beginnings--a fatherless hovel for a home; a grim, defeated mother who beat him and his brother bloody--were unusual. But now he knew that there were communities everywhere, sprinkled across the vast landscape of the known world, in which people suffered. Not always from beatings and hunger, the way he had. But from ignorance. From not knowing. From being kept from knowledge.

Messenger - Pg 22

   "And so we would give up--or maybe even trade away--reading, and music, in exchange for the extreme excitement of pulling a handle and watching sourballs spit forth from a mechanical device?" he asked.
   Put that way, Matty thought, the Gaming Machine didn't actually seem such a good trade. "Well," he said, "it's fun."