If words had flavors, hers would be bitter almonds and coffee grounds.

[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.

I truly believed that the cost of success for us shouldn't be the cost of failure for a good friend.

We believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist.

and another claimed it was inherited through a parent who was a carrier of the defective gene. I had always assumed the latter was the case with Claire. After all, surely a child who grew out of grief would be born with a heavy heart.

Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

There was no easy switch that she could flip to stem the flow of feelings, no way to drain the memories that pooled like acid in her stomach because her heart no longer knew what to do with them.