“Only another twenty thousand or so days of this to go.”

“I'd been so set on an escape that was now impossible, and the only form of freedom left to me was death. It was a terrible kind of freedom—one from misery and pain, yes, but also one from lightness and laughter and life. It was an absence of everything.”

“Trust me-that toilet and me were best friends for the first few days I was here.”

“Let me know if you're going to do something stupid, kid, 'cause I'll ditch you like that.”

“I helped you because you're new, and because when there's two people in a cell then there's only a fifty percent chance they'll take you.”

“Something in my gut twisted so hard that it felt like I was being tickled by an invisible hand, and it took me a moment to realize what it was. Hope. It had been so long since I'd felt it that the sensation was like something living inside me, something wonderful waiting to break free, just like I was.”

“The human mind is a powerful thing in many ways, but in others it's endlessly fragile—it takes only a single moment of pure terror to tear a hole in it, like a finger through a cobweb, leaving you forever just a shadow, a half-person.”