“I thought about telling him the truth: 'Oh, nothing. Just having my soul exorcised so I can roam aroundpurgatory, looking for the ghost of the dead cowboy who used to live in my bedroom.”

“What are your thoughts?''My thoughts?' I replied, before I even realized what I was saying. 'My thoughts created my world.'Mac sat up in his seat. He scrunched his curls with his hands, perplexed. 'Who said that?'I told him the truth. 'Oh, just someone I used to know,' I said, stroking the naked skin on my middle finger.”

“I have the cedar box safely tucked away in my bedroom closet, but its ghosts follow me about the house, distracting me from my work, interrupting my train of thought, pulling at my limbs and hair, whispering gossip in my ear.”

“I tell you, my idea of a ghost is something quite different. Dead men rise up never – read even your poets. Ghosts breed in the living.”

“I love the adrenaline of my bike. I always have. I try my best to let it chase away the feel of Olivia at my back, but I think nothing short of a week locked up in a bedroom with her can accomplish that. And oh what a week that would be.”

“At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.”