Quote by Catherine Ryan Howard

“Do you think people can change, Shiv? Like, really change? At their core?" Her sister sighs so hard it sounds like a gale blowing down the line. "What does that even mean, 'at their core'? What does a person changing actually look like? How would you know if they did?" "They'd act differently. Different to how you'd expect them to." "Based on what?" "Based on how they'd acted in the past." "I think people can change their habits and behaviors," Siobhan says carefully, as if she's on the stand in a courtroom, testifying for the defense, and the hot-shot prosecutor has just tried to trip her up with a cleverly worded question. "And sometimes their mind and their beliefs. People get older and wiser and have more experiences, and that all updates their... let's call it their central operating system. Because everything they do they learned in the first place, right? No one is born being X, Y, or Z. And theoretically, if you can learn how to be a certain way, you can unlearn it, too. But at the same time, you can't erase the past. You can lock it in a box and put that box away, but you can't make it disappear.”

Quote by Catherine Ryan Howard