“Then he holds her and for a moment I hear total silence; that totally silent part of a cry that announces that the most horrible grief is going to follow. And it does, and he's muffling it, but I can hear and I want someone to come over and jab her with a sedative because its pitch pierces my soul.”

“The sudden silence is horrifying, and it seems to catch my mother off guard. A tiny whimper escapes her, the sound amplified in the stillness. Surely, my father hears her now; surely he and I can't go on pretending she isn't crying.”

“The truth was...he was in love with her. Totally over-the-line, no-going-back, not-even-dead-would-he-part kind of shit.”

“A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn't have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.”

“He threw her a distasteful look. "Uh...meaning," he imitated her, "That Caia like totally isn't like a self-absorbed bimbo. She only like totally mashed people into pulp when someone else is in like total danger.""I don't say like and totally that much, O-K!!”

“...because it requires the total surrender of my will and finally, ultimately, the wholesale destruction of my ego. That is hard. It I'm going to another world, I cry out, I want to be ME in it.”