It's not the place, I think. It's the people. We'd have all been the same anywhere else.

I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.

No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.

My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.

I guess that’s the beauty of books. When they finish they don’t really finish.

The first couple of times, he simply stayed - a stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered “Shhh, I’m here, its alright.” After three weeks, he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness.

for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right.