“You tell us about your other friends. You feel guilty speaking about them, but you are annoyed, frustrated. You don't always trust their motives. You feel pressured by their demands on you. You're ...”

“And in that foggy place between sleep and waking, he could have been anyone. That was what she liked most about him: In the darkness, he became whomever she wanted.”

“You live like comfortable strangers. Like characters in a play.”

“They will stare. They will stand to the side and watch her be alone.”

“That was the real bitch about time: Everything true would become false, if only you waited long enough.”

“I was smiling yesterday,I am smiling today and I will smile tomorrow.Simply because life is too short to cry for anything.”

“You stay safe, You love. You survive. You laugh and cry and struggle and sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed. You Push.”

“I cut myself because you wouldn't let me cry.I cried because you wouldn't let me speak.I spoke because you wouldn't let me shine.I shone because I thought you loved me...”

“Fine," he repeated, and I wondered why it was I kept coming back to this, again and again, a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.”

“All is fine with the world...”

“Your mother is going to be fine," the nurse says. I breathe more easily but the word settles into my stomach. Fine. Was she fine before?”

“If we fail to listen to music, we shall be miserable.”

“But such was the way with people they loved the things that made them miserable.”

“In reality of everyday occurrences I've had to submit to people in order not to lose them. It's less the submission that bothers me, I guess, than how it makes my life miserable. And what happens i...”