“Empathy is just another way to talk about yourself.”

“[...] 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.”

“It came to me that I was crying, a steady runoff, a bodily function like anything else the body does on its own, a beating heart, a breath[...]”

“Yes, Miss Masters, but walking is also a way to announce who you are." Gideon waved one arm impassionedly. "How you view yourself in the world. The way you hold yourself, the way you move, how you occupy a space, tells other people a good deal about you," ~from To Love a Thief”

“Even the things that showed him his path seemed to point at what a fool he was. Another of life's ironies? Or just fate's way of mocking him?”

“The waves smash against rocks, boulder thunders upon bolder. Granite men grind one another, leaving their clean sand to floor the ocean.The alternative would be for the republic to breed up a race of men who could work together without growing violent: men more interested in getting somewhere than having their own way." Haniel Long: Homestead 1892: Pittsburgh Memoranda.”

“We become what we think about all day long,”