“Sometimes this was just the way the game ended. Sometimes you did your best, and it all went straight to hell anyway.”

“I've never been impulsive. It's always been in my nature to consider things carefully and then decide upon the best solution. Except, sometimes the circumstances change. Sometimes things get so complicated and so bad that your nature just doesn't matter anymore.”

“It’s not the wisest thing - love - but when it happens, there’s not a lot you can do to stop it. Sometimes you just have to soldier on through.”

“I wanted it in the way you sometimes want to jump into very cold water, even though you know it won't feel good. I wanted to go numb. To see what it felt like to be someone else.”

“People do that sometimes. Change.”

“The way Lillian says it is hungry, like she’s waiting for something to be revealed, and I wonder if maybe that’s the real difference between us—that when she pulls back the curtain and stares into the blackness behind it, it’s just one more way of testing herself. Like some game you can never win, because even if you face all the shocking realities and the horrors of the world, once you’ve seen that kind of awfulness, you can never un-see it. You have to carry it around with you forever.”

“I just want that, the way I feel when you kiss me. Just having it makes all the bad things better.”