“I wanted everything to freeze, it was finally where I wanted it, and I whispered to my empty dining room, "Nobody move." Timothy was healthy, my dad was still sober, I had good friends, I was in love, my work as a counselor was so rewarding, but above all of that, I had a drag queen who strutted through my life, always at just the right time, teaching me that there is glitter in the darkness if only you remember to look in the right places. (265)”

“I wanted to curl up in her lap and stay there forever. I wanted to be her. She was raising me, cultivating me, molding me into a far better version of me than I could have ever dreamed up, let alone lived out, on my own. (149)”

“She told me to keep writing. After my journal filled up, I bought another one. As I wrote and read my entries to Joan, I felt myself metamorphosing. My growth was like the tide, coming in waves, retracting out of reach, coming back. Sometimes undercurrents came, pulling at my feet, sucking the sand out from under them. I dug my toes in hard and closed my eyes and managed to stay mostly upright, but those riptides came anyway, guided by the same moon that looked so benevolent, so white and happy against the indigo sky, so serene and fat and innocent, so far away. (141)”

“Timothy said there were just those people who, when it all came down to that final moment and you were leaving Earth on a spaceship that could fit only so many people, got On the Ship with you. They were familiar. Part of you. Necessary, for various reasons. (152)”

“I was starting to understand that the more you talked about something the less it hurt, each telling deflating it a little bit more. That was why we had to say it out loud at the beginning of every meeting: My name is Delia and I'm an addict. It was so we could stop flinching and just live with it. (72)”

“It was beautiful not despite but because of the friction it has had to endure. It had been thrashed around, but instead of being destroyed, it was improved with every scratch and scrape, sculpted. In fact, the scuffs themselves are what gave it its quiet splendor; they are responsible for turning a simple piece of glass (which could have just as easily been trash) into a gem. It wouldn't be the same without the wear and tear; it wouldn't be something pretty enough to be turned into jewelry if it hadn't been damn near broken. I closed my fist around this tear-shaped gem and thought about my own uneven edges, my own abrasions, and things I have endured that have, instead of breaking me, completed me, prepared me for the next tumble. Its odd beauty was hard-won. It came from reinventing itself. From having risen to the top of the discard pile. Like a phoenix, from victim to victor. (325)”

“In a rush, Joan and Timothy and the log cabin and the prayers and even those tough little pieces of beachglass came into my mind, reminding me that the point is to endure, not to break. (71)”