... for home is a magnet that lures back even its most abstracted children.

That, my dear, is what makes a character interesting, their secrets.

She's one of the few people able to look beyond the lines on my face to see the twenty-year-old who lives inside.

She'd slept terribly the night before. The room, the bed, were both comfortable enough, but she'd been plagued with strange dreams, the sort that lingered upon waking but slithered away from memory as she tried to grasp them. Only the tendrils of discomfort remained.

I sound contemptuous, but I am not. I am interested--intrigued even--by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain.

You'll beat this. I know it doesn't feel like it, but you will. You're a survivor." "I don't want to survive it." "I know that, too," Nell had said. "And it's fair enough. But sometimes we don't have a choice.

But everyone's an expert with the virtue of hindsight . . . .