“The truth is that I’ve spent all my life with my binoculars trained on the Maybe Islands, a pristine place of fantasy that is really no better than the razor-rocks of misery. Maybe if I had stayed on the farm… maybe if I hadn’t gone with Spike… maybe if I could have lived more peaceably… maybe if I’d met the right person years ago, maybe if I hadn’t done this, or that or, its cousin, the other. Maybe, baby, the promised land was there and I missed it. Look at it glittering in the light. But the truth is I am inventing the maybe. I can only make the choices I make, so why torture myself with what I might have done, when all I can handle is what I have done. The Maybe Islands are hostile to human life.”
“Maybe if I hadn’t been so hell-bent on not becoming my parents, I could have saved Charlie. Maybe I would have been his girlfriend. Maybe we could have gotten married and been happy, regardless of who our parents were and what they did to each other.”
“who is the love of my life? Maybe I don't have one. Maybe it's not love at all. But if it's not love, then what is it? I wish I knew.”
“Death was a release, in so many ways. An end to suffering. An escape to something else. What that something else was, I didn’t know. Maybe heaven. Maybe hell. Maybe nothing at all. But I doubted it could be any worse than some of the things I’d seen and done in my lifetime.”
“Maybe I might be repeating the same mistake again... But don't you think it is far better to regret what I have done than what I have not done yet...?”
“But being around so much love has managed to thaw my frozen parts into something human. I feel human. Like maybe I could be part of this world. Like maybe I don't have to be a monster. Maybe I'm not a monster. Maybe things can change.”