“Nothing could be purged without a body—no crying, no exertion, no pills to take away the pain or calm me down. Nothing. Instead, something ballooned inside me until I felt like I might explode. All I could do was sit there and drown in it, wondering why Claire affected me so much, wondering if she always would.”

“[...] I wondered why I was acting so calm. I wondered why I didn't writhe against being inside my own body. If I could rip off my skin, I'd leave it in a bloody, shapeless heap on the floor beside the toilet, like so much dirty laundry. I'd beat my head against the wall until there was nothing left of my face, if it would get me outside of myself.”

“Oliver: You turned me down. So why, I wonder, did you decide Amelie would be a better choice?Claire: She smells better. And she made me cookies.”

“Instead of killing herself, I wondered, could a person just shrink and crumple until she became nothing, until her traits and quirks wasted along with her body, until one day you realized that she had faded away?”

“If I could take a pill to suck out my insides, shrivel me up into dried-out bones for dogs to cart away, I would do it. Right there.”

“Everything around me affirmed there was nothing else I could do – yet everything inside me cried that I was not doing enough.”