“No," I shout, because my mother doesn't know what I like anymore. "I don't eat things that bleed. Just cheese with lettuce or tomato and mayo. No dead fish or animals, please.""You see what I have to put up with?" my mother says.”

“And maybe love is terrifying. I'm terrified now, but not in the way she would think.I'm terrified because I hate who she is and what she's done, I do, and yet there is still something strong and powerful between us, some kind of deep, primal bond that won't end, won't snap or break or change, it just remains there inside me, as sold and factual as my blood and bones - she is my mother, I am her daughter - and I don't know what to call it because it doesn't feel like love, not the good kind I felt for Ellie, with all my heart, but instead an instinctual pull that's been there from the beginning, drawing me back to her again and again, the woman who has hurt me like no one else ever could, and now she's dying and the bond is still here, inside me, and I won't call it love or hate because emotions has nothing to do with the fact that she is my mother and I am her daughter, and we will be connected in that way forever.”

“I don't know how you say good-bye to whom and what you love. I don't know a painless way to do it, don't know the words to capture a heart so full and a longing so intense.”

“That goes for old wounds, too, you know. I really wish we'd had the chance to talk before this," he says, cracking the window so the smoke can escape. "There's a Longfellow quote I have stuck on my bulletin board at the church office- 'There is no grief like the grief that does not speak'- and it's true. I've found that keeping pain inside doesn't give it a chance to heal, but bringing it out into the light, holding it right there in your hands and trusting that you're strong enough to make it through, not hating the pain, not loving it, just seeing it for what it really is can change how you go on from there. Time alone doesn't heal emotional wounds, Sayre, and you don't want to live the rest of your life bottled up with anger and guilt and bitterness. That's how people self-destruct.”

“If I allow my gaze to travel higher-which I won't-I'll see the solid gold basketball charm on a chain that my mother gave him for his eighteenth birthday nestled in his coarse, whorled chest hair. My front teeth throb as the memory of the charm bangs against them.”

“The weight in my pocket nudges my thigh, suddenly becomes my knife. I put my hand to its unforgiving outline and can't stop crying years of tears because if I don't stab my father with my weapon, then he is going to stab me with his.”

“I know the grim probability of my own future. The odds are high that the best of me has already been ripped away and that id I don't keep hold of myself I will lose what's left.”