“the water of the lagoon was warm as blood, salt as tears, and astonishingly clear”

“You are like Odysseus, who could go out onto the great sea, lose all his goods and his friends, come to the boundaries of death, and return still himself.”

“There was nothing I wanted to do more than be unconscious again, wrapped in black, gone away. I was raw. I felt swollen with potential tears, like a water balloon filled to burst. Begging for a pin prick.”

“There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.”

“There's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.”

“Hell, in my opinion, is never finding your true self and never living your own life or knowing who you are.”

“Since the earliest period of our life was preverbal, everything depended on emotional interaction. Without someone to reflect our emotions, we had no way of knowing who we were.”