“Among other things, I've taken up smoking. Ana says I should stop with the good girl/bad girl stuff, and obviously she's right, but sometimes when I have a cigarette in my hand and the streets are dangerously empty and I've had a few drinks after my shift and I am noticing the lights that are on in different apartments, lighting stairways and whole buildings, blinking red on the skyline, I think about the nights on the island when I was content to stand alone outside the house, listening to the god horns in that soft blackness, and tasting the air, sweet with salt.”

“It is astonishing, in the end, how difficult it is to know the things you know. What I mean is that all I had discovered was everything I knew all along.”

“The whole world seemed full of hurt feelings and apologies, endless selfishness and explanations. Wasn't there anything that anyone could understand about each other? Weren't there some hurt feelings that mattered more? Or did it all matter just as much, interminably, wound after wound?”

“[Solitary confinement] is terrible. That is terrible. You're in a grave. You can't do anything. Everything's brought to you and you're in a room all day, except to come out of the showers. So when I would come out, I would entertain myself by singing, doing little mock concerts. And then when I was in the room, I would develop a routine. Like I have a lot of hair under here, so I would take my hair down and take all day to braid it on purpose. Stretch the hours out. Then I might write. And I would clean the floor. And I would look out the window. And then I'd devote a whole day to just reading. I was Christian then, trying to be. So I would read the whole Bible. I would break it down into sections. You're in a grave and you're trying to live. That's how to best describe it: trying to live in a grave. You're trying to live 'cause you're not dead yet, but nobody hears you when you call out, 'Hey, I'm alive!”

“I go to my Room and I drink and I smoke some cigarettes and I think about her. I drink and I smoke and I think about her and at a certain point blackness comes and my memory fails me.”

“Here is what I think now, reading what I wrote down for the police at age fifteen, right after I was raped. I was a good girl. Always a good girl, even when I was bad. I did my homework. If I can only be good enough, someone will eventually notice that I am trying so hard, exhausting myself with my effort to be good. This is true even today.”

“I see you're determined to miss my point.""If you're point is that there was a pretty girl in the room and it was distracting you, then I think I've taken your point handily.""You think she's pretty?" Will was surprised; Jem rarely opinioned this sort of thing."Yes, and you do too.""I hadn't noticed, really.""Yes, you have, and I've noticed you noticing.”