“You list the dead. You tell the stories of the past. You write about the catastrophes and the massacres. What about the living, Finnikin? Who honors them?”

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

“You own everything that happend to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.-- Anne Lamott”

“There are some guys you date who are so bad that when you tell the story about them, it reflects just as badly on you as it does on them.”

“The stories people tell you about themselves seem to retain the possibility of being false. But what you discover about them by yourself seems to be the truth.”

“It is so much easier to deal with the dead than with the living. The dead are out of the way, merely characters from stories about the past, never again unreadable, no misunderstandings possible, the pain coming from them stable and manageable. nor do you have to explain yourself to them, to justify the fact of your life.”