I've done my best to drive you away, Sadie," he said suddenly. "But you've never left me.

Sometimes when things break, you can hold them together for a while with string or glue or tape. Sometimes, nothing will hold what’s broken, and the pieces fly all over, and though you think you might be able to find them all again, one or two will always be missing. I flew apart. I broke. I shattered like a crystal vase dropped on a concrete floor, and pieces of me scattered all over. Some of them I was glad to see go. Some I never wanted to see again.

There's nothing that says you can't change." "Not even if it changes everything else?" I shook my head. "Not even then.

He put my fingertips to his mouth and kissed them. Licked the trace of blood away. Made them clean. Then I knew the truth I had been denying. He made me clean. Dan made me clean and shining and bright. He made me beautiful, and I did not want to lose him.

But sometimes it's the sunshine that frightens us more than the big black shadows.

I had no words to give him. No explanation. I didn’t understand it, myself. It scared me, but then so do roller coasters, and I ride them anyway, too.

I do not like that I allowed my past to close me off. I do not like that I let circumstances rob me of the ability to have a normal relationship with a man, to have friends, to be happy. I do not like it, but I had felt myself powerless against it.