Some people, they get down in a hole so deep they can't figure out what to hold on to.

Yes, she is." He looks at me, his face carved in pain. "She is dying, Sara. She will die, either tonight or tomorrow or maybe a year from now if we're really lucky. You heard what Dr. Chance said. Arsenic's not a cure. It just postpones what's coming." My eyes fill up with tears. "But I love her," I say, because that is reason enough.

[I] don't think I was trying to kill myself. I just wanted to hurt, and understand exactly whay I was hurting. This made sense: you cut, you felt pain, period.

The world is a place where the extraordinary can sit just beside the ordinary with the thinnest of boundaries; that even in environments inhospitable to man, all sort of entities might thrive.

Just because you had every right to feel sorry for yourself didn't mean you ever took the opportunity to do so.

You can be strapped to the most stable chair and still feel the world give way beneath you.

How do you tell an adult that maybe everything wrong in the world stems from the fact that she's stopped believing the impossible can happen?