“Maybe I can learn to live in a way that makes it worth writing about, and maybe I can actually become something more than this empty shell.”

“I guess relationships are just funny like that. It's impossible to figure out why some work out and others don't. Why someone can be so imperfect and still be the perfect person for you. Maybe, in the end, it's not about changing the person you care about. Maybe it's about learning what you can live with. Or maybe it's really about learning what you can't live without.”

“If I can help make you whole again, then maybe I can be, too. And I need that, Ty. I need that more than you could ever know.”

“Memoir is about handing over you life to someone and saying, This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it.”

“The truth is that I’ve spent all my life with my binoculars trained on the Maybe Islands, a pristine place of fantasy that is really no better than the razor-rocks of misery. Maybe if I had stayed on the farm… maybe if I hadn’t gone with Spike… maybe if I could have lived more peaceably… maybe if I’d met the right person years ago, maybe if I hadn’t done this, or that or, its cousin, the other. Maybe, baby, the promised land was there and I missed it. Look at it glittering in the light. But the truth is I am inventing the maybe. I can only make the choices I make, so why torture myself with what I might have done, when all I can handle is what I have done. The Maybe Islands are hostile to human life.”

“Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell.”