And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.

He pressed himself into me and kissed my neck, and it was as if everything strong and solid inside me, heart and bones and muscle and gut, softened and melted from the heat of him.

I will go out again this very night with my rockets and fuses. I will blow them straight out of their comfortable beds. Blow the rooftops off their houses. Blow the black, wretched night to bits. I will not stop. For mad I may be, but I will never be convenient.

I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.

She's got a big belt around her hips. It has a shiny buckle with PRADA on it, which is Italian for insecure.

Stop yelling. If everyone’s yelling, no one can be heard.

It's another sin. Worse than all the other ones, which are immediate, violent and hot...It's the eighth deadly sin. The one God left out, Hope.