“I am the woman who glows in the dark, I'll stay awake forever if I have to.”

“You still love me? After all I have done?” she asked, her voice breaking.“It doesn’t matter. Nothing that has happened matters. I am here now, and I love you.”

“I was so stuck on being what I thought I should be, that I couldn't be who I needed to be. ~Becca in Drawing Free”

“Certainly something had happened to me during the night. Or after months of tension I had arrived at the edge of some precipice and now I was falling, as in a dream slowly, even as I continued to hold the thermometer in my hand, een as I stood with the soles of my slippers on the floor, even as I felt myself solidly contained by the expectant looks of my children. It was the fault of the torture that my husband had inflicted. But enough, I had to tear the pain from memory, I had to sandpaper away the scratches that were damaging my brain.”

“After the masquerade, if we had found each other, if I had asked it of you, would you have taken me as your lover?”She closed her eyes, but it only made her more acutely aware of his hands moving down to caress her arms. She couldn’t think. Why did he ask? Would a lie be kinder than the truth? Everything was blurring.“Yes.”

“Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.”

“Mental prayer is, as I see it, simply a friendly intercourse and frequent solitary conversation with Him who, as we know, loves us.”