“I wanted him to hold me, to take care of me. To make the pain dissolve away. I know that this was part of what had ruined everything but I wanted it once more anyway.”

“He said, You're so tiny, like a doll, you look like you might break. I wanted him to break me. Part of me did.”

“Sometimes I wanted to peel away all of my skin and find a different me underneath.”

“What did it mean for us? Because everything I did, everything that happened to me, that was what I asked myself - what does this mean for us. It meant that I was farther away from you, different. It meant that if we let ourselves, we could get closer than we had ever been. Disappear into each other. You’d bleed and I wouldn’t. Then we both would.”

“West didn’t want her to get hurt anymore. He wanted her to let go. He wanted her to appreciate her life. To know he loved her. All these things sounded so stupid to him when he imagined saying them and he knew she didn’t want to hear them anyway. She wanted to hear one thing.”

“I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.”

“She had changed him. The ice was in his eyes and in his heart, like he had predicted with that song, but now they were deep embedded there, all the pain of the world. Not pain to make you feel for somebody else but pain to make you stop feeling.”