But it's a whole lot easier to keep[secrets] when you've got someone else who knows breathing in the same room. Carrying them alone is like having a huge spiky weight digging into your shoulders and chest, a weight you can't shift even while you're sleeping.

Sometimes, as much as writing saves one’s own life, you cannot imagine how it will save another’s. This is another reason why it is important to do the work, over and over again. It is food, the kind a soul needs.

His shoulder bumped mine again. "Can I ask you something?" I didn't answer. He was going to ask me anyway. People don't say that if they don't want to pry something out of you.

It truly sucks to doubt your friends when you only have one or two of them, I realized.

Death did not play favorites—He loved all equally. What you cannot escape, you must fight; what you cannot fight, you must endure . The god's voice—not quite words, just a thread of meaning laid in my receptive mind—

He laughed. The laugh could strip the skin off an elephant in seconds.

There was a hole inside her, and it twisted.