“Forgetting lets you live without the pain for a moment but remembering hits hard.”

“When you can’t cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist.”

“I draw in a ragged breath, the kind you take when the pain is too deep to cry, when you can't cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist.”

“If you let hope inside, it takes you over. It feeds on your insides and uses your bones to climb and grow. Eventually it becomes the thing that is your bones, that holds you together. Holds you up until you don't know how to live without it anymore. To pull it out of you would kill you entirely.”

“The pain wants to eat me away. I wish I could have one without the other, but that's the problem with being alive. You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have.”

“The darkness behind doesn't worry me; neither do the stars ahead. I think of how perhaps the best way to fly would be with hands full of earth so you always remember where you came from, how hard walking could be.”

“My mother holds Bram tightly. I draw i ragged breath, the kind you take when the pain is too deep to cry, when you can;t cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it out, you might cease to exist.I want to do something to make this better, even though I know tha nothing can change the fact of my father gone and under ground”