And scars will lighten, they'll pale unless you keep rubbing at them...wait long enough, they'll fade.

Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love.

I didn’t want to get burned. I didn't want to be the other woman, but I wanted him with all my might.

College isn't half as much fun as they told us it was going to be.""It's not one-hundredth as much fun.

The last declaration he'd made to me hung between us. The L word. The one that had nothing to do with like.

Belonging to a place isn't nearly as necessary as belonging to people you love and who love you and need you.

I was the ref. I was the ref they didn’t know about. Deaf and dumb. Invisible as a wall. I wanted no one to win

It seemed everyone knew their place in it, but I was in the mood where I would rather be alone and look a houseplants.

Vane grabbed me. “DuLac, let’s chat.”Chat. British-speak for “Stand still while I yell at you.

He was a shadow of the man that once intimidated us out of our home, a shell of a human being, a fragment of a father.

Matt was almost completely naked. A tattered loincloth and an ugly chain with a yellow diamond were his only apparel.

The combination of razor-sharp wit (completely real) and his credentials (completely fake) had won them over in the end.

It feels like the world is folding up around me, like origami paper, and I’m trapped inside of its breathless center.

I'm not very good at being alive. Sometimes I despair of ever mastering it, getting it right. When I'm old, perhaps.

I was always on guard and I was always prepared for him to be upset with me. I had lived feeling uneasy and tense for so long.