“I understand her immediately. She is an instigator, a fire starter, an accelerant of a human being, throwing herself into the middle of a crowd and lighting it up. She is fucking lighter fluid.”

“It takes a while to understand this," Vaughn says to me, "but there's enough room in a life for failure and loss." He picks up his coffee and takes a big sip, swivels in his stool. "You can really fuck up in your life. You can fuck up and then have things be okay.”

“She was fierce, quick to anger, her temper terrifying and unpredictable, her words deeply damaging when she wanted them to be. Because she had almost no need for people, she had no trouble hurting them. It seemed to enlarge her, give her strength. Quinn told her she had "poison blood".”

“See, we're intellectual equals. I am as smart as your mother, and she is as smart as me. This is a problem. There's no pecking order. A relationship is like anything else. It needs a leader and a follower.”

“The sun beats down, and I feel my shoulders burning. I could stay in this boat all day. Time is suspended in a boat. I take a deep breathand try to remember this moment, the heat on my face, the grit under my feet, the strength of the waves. I run my hands through the pebblesand sand, searching for sea glass. One thing leads to another. There are tide pools between the larger rocks, tiny rivers connecting themto the sea”

“If she would give the world what it wanted, it would deify her.”

“Just Save the Relationship"from the book Glimpses, Sis's Hinckley's advice to her grandaughter when she needed to know what to do about the fits her daughter was throwing. Just save the relationship.”