“And Lord did I push, for thee more hoursI pushed, I pushed so hard I shat, Pushed so hard blood vessels burstin my neck and in my chest, pushed so hard my asshole turned inside-out like a rosebud.”

“I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness. We made love in nothing places and turned the lights off. It felt like crying. We could not look at each other. It always had to be from behind. Like that first time. And I knew he wasn't thinking of me.He squeezed my sides so hard, and pushed so hard. Like he was trying to push me through to somewhere else.Why does anyone ever make love?”

“She reads his poems gratefully in her small Mississippi town. It's an undramatic life, yet these past months she seems to have found the intensity he yearns for, This also sounds like bragging, though she doesn't mean it to. If she could, she'd let him bear her secret. She'd let all great men bear it, for s few hours. Then, when she too it back, they'd remember how it feels to be inhabited.”

“When you push someone too far, they will push back and they push hard.”

“We’re both so fucking broken that I understand our strange attraction, a push-pull magnetism born of similar scars.”

“The hard days are the best because that's where champions are made so if you can push through, you can push through anything!”

“As hard as I tried to push the thought from my head, I couldn’t deny that it was my plans with Travis that had brightened my mood.”