Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.

It's very weird to succeed at thirty-nine years old and realize that in the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted anyway.

My grandmother stepped back into the kitchen to get their drinks. I had come to love her more after death than I ever had on Earth. I wish I could say that in that moment in the kitchen she decided to quit drinking, but I now saw that drinking was a part of what made her who she was. If the worst of what she left on Earth was a legacy of inebriated support, it was a good legacy in my book. ~Susie's grandmother, Lynn pgs 315-316

But also I wanted him to go away and leave me be. I was granted one weak grace. Back in the room where the green chair was still warm from his body, I blew that lonely, flickering candle out

Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.

These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors. She kept an honor code with her journals and her poems. 'Inside, inside,' she would whisper quietly to herself when she felt the urge to tell.

Do you miss Susie?" Because it was dark, because Ruth was facing away from her,because Ruth was almost a stranger, Lindsey said what she felt. "More than anyone will ever know.