“You can hold a secret, hold it so far in that it drives nearly every thought and every move you make- your very heartbeat, almost.”

“A person could leave you so quickly. So much history and time and memories, but they snuck away from you, and other things took their place. How could you hold on? Wait. A bigger question. The biggest. How could you hold on andlet go?”

“Darkness does this. It finds all the places you are hiding in. It finds all the things you are holding onto tightly and makes you let go.”

“The most insane things can become normal if you have them around you long enough. A mind can’t seem to hold anything too crazy for too long without finding a way to make it seem normal.”

“If time heals all wounds, and a book can hold a person's entire life, then you can speed up the process with a pulp time warp.”

“You were supposed to have hope, right? You were supposed to respect its power and hold on. And so I did. I held, and held, and let hope fill me. But as the days went on, it seemed I could be holding for a long, long time. Hope could be the most powerful thing or the most useless”

“Our memories and the events of our lives are untidy things. We wish that we could file them away and shut the door, or we wish the opposite - that they would stay with us forever. You want to banish the remembrance of a tight hold on your ankle, a rope under a bed, the amber-colored medicine bottles of your father, the door your mother slams after a night of too much wine and jealousy. You want to keep close to you always that first sweet kiss, a maple leaf, that growing sense of yourself; you want to hold the sight of your dying father on that last boat trip, the calm you remember as your mother held you. Her voice.”