“Her voice was like loneliness. It was regret. She sang about a past you couldn't get out of and didn't want.”

“She talked about wanting to be a part of something, wanting to be desired, to be 'special', craving to be loved. She talked about experiencing the kind of loneliness so immense it could swallow you up. She called it 'loneliness that crowds couldn't cure'.”

“You didn't get past something like that, you go through it -- and for that reason alone, I understood more about her than she ever would have guessed.”

“She didn't want to go far, just out of the trees so she could see the stars. They always eased her loneliness. She thought of them as beautiful creatures, burning and cold; each solitary, and bleak, and silent like her.”

“She often told her children that they couldn't change the past and they couldn't jump forward to the future. All they had was today, and they needed to live it in such a way that they wouldn't create just another regretted yesterday. Mourning the past was never productive-she knew this full well.”

“The feeling of not being enough for someone, of knowing you would do anything for them and they not the same for you. I didn't want to, but I felt bad for her. I wanted to hate her, but I couldn't. I couldn't blame her for what she didn't know.”