“For some reason, I believed that I had above all else an obligation to protect everyone-- my teachers, my family-- from the knowledge of my cutting. What they did not know would not cause them pain.”

“All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.”

“What had I seen? Too much. What did I know? Only that knowledge carries a damned high price. Miss Wilcox, my teacher, had taught me so much. Why had she never taught me that?”

“Pain is what I feed from when nothing else will nourish the noxious fury in my heart. It’s what I cling to when everything else—everyone else—slips right between my grasping fingers.”

“..he never requires more than I am able to give, and what he does require of me is always appropriate to my knowledge and circumstances....My obligation is to give all I have, not all someone else has, to be as good as I can be, not as good as someone else is.”

“What would happen if I cut there? Right across my face where everyone could see. Everyone would know. Maybe someone would finally stop me.”