She said writting novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you'd never do it again.

So I just decided to relax into it, bumpy and crazy as it might be, and try for once to just go along for the ride.

I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real.

Don't give me no rotten tomato, 'cause all I ever wanted was your sweet potato.

It didn't make you noble to step away from something that wasn't working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.

He was the closest thing I'd ever had to something, or someone, that mattered. But in the end, close didn't count. You were either in, or you weren't.

You own a Tic Tac. Gum is just borrowed. - Esther