“The thing about hearts is that they always want to keep beating”

“I am the living dead girl because I am too weak to die. I hate those crying dough women on TV because they are just like me, weak and broken and clinging to the hands that hold us under.”

“I have been smashed and put back together so many times nothing works right. Nothing is where it should be, heavy thumping in my shoulder where my heart now beats.”

“I thought living dead girls couldn't feel pain, thought I was emptied out but I'm not, I'm not.”

“She became a story, one I have mostly forgotten. One I can't end because she died a long time ago.”

“Grace is my favourite church word. A state of being. Something you can pray for. Something God can grant. Something you can obtain. Perfection is out of reach. But grace -- grace you can reach for.”

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”

“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”

“Soldiers manage by dividing themselves. They're one man in the killing, another at home, and the man that dandles his bairn on his knee has nothing to do wi' the man who crushed his enemy's throat ...”

“The world is vicious, too huge to care about even its own survival”