Good people are good people; religion has nothing to do with it.

I can see myself now, she said. And I can see what I want to be, ten years from now. But I don't understand how I'm going to get from here to there.

You okay in there?" "No, I'm hanging from a closet rod.

What's worse ...? The devil you don't know ... or the devil you do?

She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.

Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-Aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception. There were times I stayed in my room for days on end with headphones on, if only so that I would not have to listen to my mother cry. There were the weeks that my father worked round-the-clock shifts, so that he wouldn't have to come home to a house that felt too big for us.

But you could only remake your own future, not anyone else's, and for some people that just wasn't good enough.