It’s never one thing that leads to a tragic accident, she was sure she’d read once—though she couldn’t say where. It’s usually seven things—seven mistakes, or errors in judgment, or acts of negligence...
Honestly, it’s the most you can ask of men sometimes. They’re so wound up, so buried beneath layers of boys don’t cry, and pussy, and man up, that they don’t even know how to feel about anything. I sh...
This was what happened. Abused boys became dangerous men. Those around them with a self-preservation instinct—even the people who loved them—started to move away.
Love, a promise delivered already broken.
Honestly, I tried not to think about my sister much. Or my mother. I have been guilty of doing what it takes to bury most of my memories when it comes to that- from junk food to booze to drugs, there...
Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.
Sometimes it seemed like that was all it was, motherhood—grief and guilt and fear. You said good-bye a little every day—from the minute they left your body until they left your home.
He’s dead, Annie. But as long as you haven’t dealt with the memories of the things he has done to you, he’ll live on. We’ll always have to face these times when you think he’s returned for you. You’ll...
There were only two ways of being in the world. You either walked through life acting out of love, or you acted out of fear.
The watercolor sky—silver fading to blue fading to black, the high slice of moon and glimmering stars—reminded her that she’d always wanted to paint but didn’t know how, was in some ways afraid of the...
Wasn’t there some belief about how if you drop a frog into boiling water, it will jump right out? But if you put it in cold water and turn up the heat gradually, it will allow itself to slowly cook to...
Her mother always said that when you were sad or worried or angry, that you had to do something. Anything. Go for a walk. Make cookies. Draw a picture. Clean your room. Never just lie there and feel s...
Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives i...
For a while, she’d held on to some illusion of control. And then, right about the time Ricky gave up his afternoon nap, she finally understood that for all the schedules and consistency, the rewards a...
Never talk to strangers. If someone ever tries to take you, fight with everything you have. Scream as loud as you can. (He'd never told her what to do if the man was too strong and there was no one to...
No one ever talks about issues like dissociative identity disorder, fugue, or psychotic breaks in anything but the most negative light. No one ever talks about how the personality does this type of th...
Give up, she wanted to tell them. You lost. The world is crap, and no amount of communicating is going to change it.
Motherhood was an ever widening circle of good-byes.
For what other reason might we cling to objects, old photographs, tarnished jewelry, yellowed letters? They’re charms, little pieces of magic. When we touch them, we regain for a second what time has...
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. —John Milton, Paradise Lost
Showing 61 to 80 of 181 results
