“Sweet, voluptuous & sexyBut I'm hellacious as they getDon't test me!My equilibrium is offI want balanceI want my love rocked backTo its origin”

“After a week's worth of failed fairy tales—stories that made my eyelids flutter open and not shut—my father tried telling me stories that belonged only to him. Thomas told me of an island off the coast of a different world. On this island, there stood a city whose buildings were made of glass. He told me that at the heart of this city was a forest with trees, ponds and a lake, swans and horses, and even a small castle. He told me that the streets of the city were filled with bright yellow cars that you hopped in and out of at will and that would take you wherever you wanted to go. In this city, there were sidewalks overflowing with people from the whole world over who wanted so much to be there. He told me of its neighborhoods, with names like Greenwich Village and Harlem and Chinatown. At the nucleus of these stories was my father, and spinning around him was the city of New York. Long before I would see them in photographs or in real life, my father had given me the white crown lights of the Chrysler Building and the shining needle of the Empire State.”

“Whenever I'm with you it's as though someone has reached inside my chest, until the pain is almost more than I can bear. And when I'm not with you, I'd give anything to feel that way again." He heaved a deep sigh and continued. "But I...I couldn't go another day as I was.""And who are you now?" she asked."A man hopelessly in love with you.”

“... I am with fire between my teeth and still nothing but my blank page.”

“That’s God,” he said. “He goes by many names, many faces, but God is simply that—love. I find God in this church, in the faces of my parishioners. One man may find it in nature, in the majesty of a tree or a river,” he said and then looked directly at Simon. “Or another man may find it in a woman’s smile. Wherever it’s to be found, it’s to be cherished. When you find it, you hold onto it and nothing, no force, no evil can take it from you. It’s yours forever. And that, my dear, is something very powerful.”

“She wanted Kristen to do all the horrible things she said she would do to her and to have her physical pain from Kristen’s hate replace her mental pain from her father’s love. Pain that comes from the outside was much easier to endure. The wounds heal, the scars go away, and it’s over. She could move on. She would live on and forget her pain. The wounds caused by her father, that festered inside Simone’s heart, mind, and blood would never heal. She would never be able to just move on and forget the scars.”

“Alcohol, I had learned, was an eloquent if somewhat inaccurate interpreter. I had placed my trust that December night in glass after glass of it, eager not for drink but for a bit of talk. ”