“Ive perfected the art of the fake smile. Its not so difficult when you are completely numb.”

“Bursts of hope make despair harder to live with.”

“She has to live, Eliott. I owe her a lifetime of apologies.Sometimes I think thats all we owe our parents.”

“I won't cry. When the guilt is this heavy, you can't. It just settles and stays with you, and it's cold.”

“Will leans forward, pulls off his mask, and kisses my forehead. "I'm glad I was the one to save you this time" he whispers.”

“You have to remember that there are reasons to live, and that at least a few people are decent, and that the world is worthwhile some of the time, okay?I raise my face to his, wanting another kiss,...”

“and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.”

“Bursts of hope make despair harder to live with.”

“She has to live, Eliott. I owe her a lifetime of apologies.Sometimes I think thats all we owe our parents.”

“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother...”

“We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...”

“Id never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons.”