“Aunt Clara doesn't take her eyes off her toast. Her delicate jet earrings tremble as her knife scratches at the toast like a cat's paw, buttering every inch. Strange how even the most mundane habits of dislikable people can strike such harsh chords. I even hate the way Aunt butters.”

“And I didn't mean to shut her out, but sometimes I did it anyway. I liked having power. Power is its own kind of magic.”

“It's strange how so much life can be lived without speaking”

“He was the toast to her butter.”

“Never feel like you need to visit him, ever?" "I see him every morning in the mirror. I think of him as the ghost version of me. And who needs to visit your own ghost?”

“What are you burning?" On a glance, just some papers."I write in a journal." He spoke below his breath, so that his words weren't quite for me. "Because I like to see everything written down. So that I know it really happened. That I wasn't just making it up. Then I read it and memorize it. And then I have to destroy the hard evidence."I thought of my own journal, the muddle of every page. All those unfiltered, lunatic letters to Sean Ryan."What is it, exactly, that you need to destroy?""Everything that I don't want to be true.”

“Sister Maria Martinez whom I believe I've mentioned before has been giving me cooking classes. Today I learned how to bake mean banana bread. The secret apparently is half a cup of dark rum.”