Because that’s how it works after something terrible has happened. You know this is true if something terrible has ever happened to you. A thousand objects take on new meaning. Everything is a reminder of something else.

The world was large, so large. Bigger than it had been before. Family, too, a bigger word. That felt like a good thing. An essential thing. There was power in numbers.

I kept trying to talk myself out of my second thoughts when they were trying to help me. My advice? When it comes to relationships, second thoughts should be promoted.

This is just one of those annoying and unjust differences between you and your younger sibling...I was probably fifteen before I could go to a friend's house without giving mom an FBI dossier on the people; Bex can practically hitchhike on the freeway with a mere "Have fun, honey.

You've got to say what you mean and mean what you say...Doubt in your voice is an open door people will shove right through.

...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.

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