"A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed. It won’t stretch to make room for you."

"Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it."

"I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away."

"It’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out."

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."

"To love would be an awfully big adventure."

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you."

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."