I think my head's a minefield strewn with triggers, and maybe if I survive each explosion, what emerges from the wreckage will be me, really, truly me.

I felt like the blonde in every horror movie who hears a noise in the basement and goes to investigate alone. Sometimes you smell the stupid all around you, but you step in it anyway.

I'm Sirantha Jax, and I have had enough.

I have had passionate kisses and fierce ones, kisses so sweet they tasted like pure honey and kisses that cut like knives, but until this moment, I’ve never had one that said both hello and good-bye.

So I make no effort to hide my pain. I don’t ever put it all on display like this—but for today and all the rest of the days of the trial, I must. My every flinch, every flicker of pain, will be magnified a hundred times over, then dissected by the pundits and talking heads. But I’m told it’s necessary; the world needs to see me vulnerable and wounded. I cannot appear not to care or to lack remorse, but that removes a crucial component of my self- defense mechanism and leaves me bleeding for all the world to see. I suppose that’s rather the point.

He's never going to sit at my feet and write me poems, which is good because I hate poetry, except dirty ones that rhyme.

I’m as forgiving as the wall you hit at two hundred kilometers an hour.