“She hated herself more than she could express.”

“I thought maybe if she could express herself rather than suffer herself, if she had a way to relieve the burden, she lived for nothing more than living, with nothing to get inspired by, to care for, to call her own, she helped out at the store, then came home and sat in her big chair and stared at her magazines, not at them but through them, she let the dust accumulate on her shoulders.”

“Pia was blackmailed into committing a crime more suicidal than she could possibly have imagined, and she had no one to blame but herself.”

“She hated her job the same way I hated my jobs because she knew she was worth more, but she also hated herself so there wasn't much point in trying to do better.”

“...[She] felt as if she were both a stranger to herself and more herself than she'd ever been.”

“She was here, and she was stronger than this, harder than this. They could make her hate herself, make her doubt herself, but they couldn’t take away her deepest instinct. Not just the need to survive, but the need to survive long enough and strong enough to tell them to go fuck themselves.”