“for the fifth time this monthyou say you’re going to leave himhe calls you a cunt over the phonethen walks the three miles to your houseand kisses your mouth until the word is justa place on your body.i don’t know what brings broken people togethermaybe damage seeks out damagethe way stains on a mattress halo into one anotherthe way stains on a mattress bleed into each other.”

“You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex, but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them”

“If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontinence as rejoiced in it.”

“The stains on the mattress. Like dried flower petals. Not recent. Old love; there's no other kind of love in this room now.”

“That is the curse of lying, Sister. Once you place that crown of the liar upon your head, you can take it off again, but it leaves a stain for all time.”

“You digest and absorb your life by turning it into stories,' he says, 'the same way this theater seems to digest people.' With one hand, he points to a carpet stain, this dark stain sticky and growing mold, branched with arms and legs.Other events—the ones you can’t digest—they poison you. Those worst parts of your life, those moments you can’t talk about, they rot you from the inside out. Until you’re Cassandra’s wet shadow on the ground. Sunk in your own yellow protein mud.But the stories that you can digest, that you can tell—you can take control of those past moments. You can shape them, craft them. Master them. And use them to your own good. Those are stories as important as food. Those are stories you can use to make people laugh or cry or sick. Or scared. To make people feel the way you felt. To help exhaust that past moment for them and for you. Until that moment is dead.Consumed. Digested. Absorbed.”