I don't know how I know that, but I do. I can feel the beat of that truth inside me. Taste it bitter on my tongue. Sometimes, like now, I didn't think I want to know who I really am.

I heard how people sounded when their dreams were shattered, when their lives were turned into a waking nightmare.

I love books. I like that the moment you open one and sink into it you can escape from the world, into a story that's way more interesting that yours will ever be.

You tell yourself that you aren't something or that you can't be something, and you know what? It will become true. You have to decide who you are and what you can do and then go after what you want. Because believe me, no one is going to give it to you.

Darling, the world doesn't owe you anything.

I’m broken, I have cut myself wide open. I can see my heart and it is not what I believed it was, it is not good and kind and all the things I have always thought I am.

..."Are you okay?" he says, still looking at me, and I feel my smile slip, fade, and the silence that falls over us then is so total I can’t hear anything, not the rush-hiss of my heart pounding in my chest, not the sounds all around us; insects, wind, and the distant clatter of others’ lives in houses built close but not too close because when we look out our windows we all like to pretend that everything we see is ours. But Ryan is not mine.