“But every time, what brought me to my senses was my conviction that before a person dropped a new life into this world, she should probably get a real one herself.”

“I don’t remember my life before being brought to New Haven.”

“I knew her better than herself …and she was beautiful and strong and felt deep. It has always surprised me to see the way she saw herself; how little she thought about her person. It struck me as surprising because every single time I’ve seen her, I’ve thought her larger than life. And that’s why the world feared her. Because they couldn’t compare to her; she raised a new bar for others to be measured by. Because looking at the sun hurts…and she was that to me. My own piece of sky.”

“There comes a time in every Salome's life when she should no longer be dropping the last veil.”

“I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there.”

“Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I begin a new story. My characters are aspects of my life. I have to respectfully and carefully move between them.”