“The story of her life. God gave you everything just to take it away. Just so you knew exactly what you were missing.”

“God gave you everything just to take it away. Just so you knew exactly what you were missing.”

“You want car?' Rena said. 'Artist college? You think I don't know? How you think you pay? So this dress. Pretty dress. Someone gave. But money is . . .' She stopped, struggling to find the words, what money was. Finally, she threw her hands up. 'Money. You want remember, so just remember.”

“what was the point in creating something that was so futile and so precious? everything beautiful was like that. a little bit of the true world. beauty said there was something more than just one fucking thing after another. time could rest for a moment, stop and that senseless motion. people thot beauty was bullshit, just a bandaide slapped over the abyss, but they couldnt be more wrong. beauty mattered, it was the only thing that fed you when everything turned to shit. ”

“That was what she really wanted. To forget so thoroughly she'd never have another memory again, the bitter so bitter you gave up the sweet.”

“I left walking backwards so I wouldn't miss a moment of her. I hated the idea of going back to Marvel's, so I walked around the block, feeling Olivia's arms around me, my nose full of perfume and the smell of her skin, my head swirling with what I had seen and heard in the house so much like ours, and yet not at all. And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty separate worlds. Nobody every really knew what was going on just next door.”

“A couple of times, I could have turned a trick. But I didn’t want to start. I knew how it would play. When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.”