Life is much different from the days when there were lilies in my mother’s garden, and all my secrets fit into a paper cup.

You can try to please everyone and risk accomplishing nothing, or go for your dreams and risk pissing a few people off.

None of the wives mention the security guards by the door, who will probably tackle us to the ground if we try to leave without our husbands.

and I've always known it, the way I love a song I hear for the first time, even before I know all the words, the way I love my favorite color, and the way that the train would speed past my bedroom when it was very quiet and I'd feel it in my stomach rushing through me. I love you in a way that I've never felt needed to be said.

There is a silence so great that I can hear the ice crystals cracking and falling from eyelashes of girls who will never blink again.

For males twenty-five is the fatal age. For women it's twenty. We are all dropping like flies.

I stare at her collarbone that's framed with lace, the hollow of her throat, her shoulders that rise with each rise with the weight of her next breath. We're fragile things. Our bones show through our skin. What would any god want with us?