“...I have to go home and get a few things done. If I don’t get out the Pledge soon, the dust bunnies are going to be leaving tracks on my furniture...”

“I wish I would have been there for you.” He finally found his voice. “I wish I would have been there to beat up all the children who bullied you, to shoot your father dead the first time he broke one of your bones. I wish I would have been there to sweep you out of town and save you from the horrors you went through.”Her eyes widened in surprise and then immediately narrowed as she shook her head. “I didn’t need to have a hero in my life, Mark. I needed to figure out how to be my own hero. I took the easy way out. I allowed small-town people to label me and then I did my very best to live up to the label they’d provided. It’s taken me thirty-seven years to realize I don’t need a hero. I’m all I need and I’m strong enough to build the rest of my life alone.”

“Someone else said to me, "I wish I could just lay around in the bed and read." You know, it's okay to have the thought--just don't say it out loud. If your life is so miserable that you're envious of someone who's just been diagnosed with a debilitating illness, maybe it's time to make a few life adjustments.”

“Magic. I want magic. I want magic that works.THere is no doctor that can make the creature back into my daddy. No therapy that can make him into what he should have been.No going back to the beginning and rewriting. He is what he is and if I have to write what I know, I'm doomed, because I can never write about this, never.”

“Getting involved with a victim was kind of like trying to find love on a reality show...rarely successful.”

“The one who gets you is the one who makes you forget you ever desired anything as dull and ridiculous as perfection.”

“When it comes to food I believe in having anything I want... just not all of it, all of the time!”