There is no before. There is only now, and what comes next.

People need other people to feel things for them," she said. "It gets lonely to feel things all by yourself.

I hate skin; I hate bones and bodies. I want to curl up inside of him and be carried there forever.

This is one of my favorite things about the Underground: the crashing of the cymbals, the screeching guitar riffs, music that moves into the blood and makes you feel hot and wild and alive.

It is a beautiful world for the people who get to play the fist.

In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, numbers and data. We weigh, we quantify, we measure, and the soul is ground to dust.

That was what her parents did not understand—and had never understood—about stories. Liza told herself storied as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories.