“This was the truth at the core of my existence: this yawning emptiness, scantily clad in rage. It had been there all along.”

“Women are such contrary creatures when it comes to sex. You parade around like scantily clad vixens but blush when you're caught staring at the erections you cause.”

“I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.”

“If I look at my old lyrics, they seem to be full of rage, but empty. There was an emptiness in my life.”

“For a moment, sincere human fury had burned through the training, touched a hot core of genuine rage. He felt shaken, but more whole, more truly himself, then he'd been for years.”

“But just because you bury something, that doesn’t mean it stops existing. Those feelings, they’d been there all along. All that time. I had to face it. He was part of my DNA. I had brown hair and I had freckles and I would always have Conrad in my heart.”