“Going away isn't going to help as much as you think. The memory stays with you, and the stain. It's not something you slough off once you leave.”

“You can scrub and scrub, but sometimes something doesn't just go away. It . . . it stains you.”

“The problem here is that you think love will take all the pain away, like it does for characters in a book. It's not that easy, Stephen, and not that simple; despite all your bards and how much we'd like that to be true. It isn't. Love isn't going to fix me, or you. It's not a laxative that just helps you shit out all the crap you'd rather forget.”

“So you go away from where you were afraid. Some stay; some go; it's a big difference, leaving the humiliations of childhood, the morbid fear. We didn't have much to say to each other, the ones that left and the ones that stayed. Children get shamed by fear but you can't tell the adults that; they don't care. They make children into dead things like they are. If there's something left alive in you, you run. You run from the poor little child on her knees; fear burned the skin off all right; she's still on her knees, dead and raw and tender.”

“Why leave when you can stay, why stay if you have to go”

“That is the curse of lying, Sister. Once you place that crown of the liar upon your head, you can take it off again, but it leaves a stain for all time.”