He hadn’t been her first lover or the first boy to give her an orgasm. He hadn’t even been the first she’d loved. He’d been the first to turn her inside out with something as simple as a smile. The first to make her doubt herself. He’d taken her deeper than anyone ever had, and yet she hadn’t drowned.

I was trying to replace something I'd come to care about very much with something pretending to be as important.

Does madness bring creativity? Or does creativity cause madness? Can an artist create without the ups so high and the downs so low?

Love is always real, even when it doesn’t last.

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.

But the problem with looking back when you should be walking ahead is that you usually end up walking into something that hurts.

You can't hurt someone who doesn't care about you.