“Life goes on, whether you like it or not. I just wished it could lurch forward. Time is the best doctor, they say, and thats bullshit, because from certain pains you can never heal. They keep screa...”

“Maybe that was what being together with someone really meant. It meant seeing past the idealization you had of them, embracing their flaws and fears, helping them to overcome them, waiting for them...”

“Everything seemed less frightening with music, even more so with music I knew by heart. It forced a familiar perspective on the scary unknown that was about to happen.”

“Why did it have to be such a shameful secret? Hadnt I been potty-trained and taught to chew with my mouth closed? So what was the freaking big deal about having sex? Wasnt it essential to the survi...”

“Depression is a physical illness, like bleeding from a wound that wont close. You cannot fix it, it doesnt heal.”

“Sometimes, when you want to help a broken person, your attempts only remind them of their missing pieces.”

“Creativity is the state of consciousness in which you enter into the treasury of your innermost being and bring the beauty into manifestation. (p.232)”

“Do you think I'm pretty?I think you're beautifulBeautiful?You are so beautiful, it hurts sometimes.”

“As if you were on fire from within.The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”

“HOW do you define a word without concrete meaning? To each his own, the saying goes, soWHYpush to attain an ideal state of being that no two random people will agree isWHERE you want to be? Faultle...”

“When she thinks of the toxins built up inside of her from so many years of eating carelessly, of the resentment that has grown steadily over fifteen years of marriage, of the stretch marks and the ...”

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathingthey are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would nev...”

“The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen.”

“Do you know why you feel destined for something greater? Why? Kip asked, quiet, hopeful. Because youre an arrogant little shit.”

“I knew from Brianna that being beautiful wasnt all great. Brianna had changed in middle school. One day we were both seventh graders and the next, she was a supermodel who had a seventh grader for ...”