Fear was the biggest bullshitter, he’d said. But sometimes, too, fear told the truth.

It was one of those times you feel a sense of loss, even though you didn't have something in the first place. I guess that's what disappointment is- a sense of loss for something you never had.

I became a writer because I love books, and I believe in their power.

...wanting things for the wrong reasons can turn anyone's life into a marshmallow on a stick over a hot fire: impossibly messy and eventually consumed, one way or another.

No one is ever quite as strong or as weak as you'd think.

It makes you realize how basically everything we do comes down to a) mating or b) competing for resources. It’s just like Animal Planet, only we’ve got Cover Girl and Victoria’s Secret instead of colored feathers and fancy markings, and the violence occurs at the Nordstrom’s Half-Yearly Sale.

We had lain together, skin on skin, been as close as two people could, and he was a stranger. He was that someone who you are afraid of as a child, stranger. They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew.