“Here's one night when I control the chaos. I participate with the doom I can't control. I'm dancing with the inevitable, and I survive....My regular little dress rehearsal...the day I finally meet Death, the two of us will be old, long-lost friends. Me and Death, separated at birth.”

“This is the biggest mistake I could think would save me. I wanted to give up the idea that I had any control. Shake things up. To be saved by chaos. To see if I could cope, I wanted to force myself to grow again. To explode my comfort zone.”

“And I say no. The problem is the light, the dim light down here. Cupped in the palm of my hand, the cyanide and the wood pill, I can't tell which is which. What's sex and what's death—I can't tell the difference.I ask which one to give her.And Mr. Bacardi leans in to look, both of us breathing hot, damp air into my open hand.”

“That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.”

“It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.”

“This isn’t really death,’ Tyler says. ‘We’ll be legend. We won’t grow old.’ I tongue the barrel into my cheek and say, Tyler, you’re thinking of vampires.”

“Not that I’m crazy or anything, I just want some proof that death isn’t the end. Even if crazed zombies grabbed me in some dark hall one night, even if they tore me apart, at least that wouldn’t be the absolute end. There would be some comfort in that.”