It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.

Dieting fooled you into thinking you could control your life.

A seven-year-old girl can take only so many walks with her grandfather.

Don't waste your time on life.

The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us.

That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.