She was the sort of person for whom fear was the natural response to that beyond explanation.

It didn't occur to him that she might have chosen to remain this way. That where he saw reserve and loneliness, Cassandra saw self-preservation and the knowledge that it was safer when one had less to lose.

I am not a storyteller . . . not like the others. I only have one tale to tell.

I've heard it said that children born to stressful times never shake the air of woe . . . .

Rejection is a cancer, Edie. It eats away at a person.

Thinking of nothing. Trying to think of nothing. Thinking of everything.

We're all unique, just never in the ways we imagine.