In the end, we’ll all become stories.

A word after a word after a word is power.

“War is what happens when language fails.”

“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”

“A word after a word after a word is power.”

“Don't let the bastards grind you down.”

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.”

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”

“I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.”

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.”

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.”

“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.”

“Longed for him. Got him. Shit.”

“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.”

“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”

“Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.”

“Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.”

“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”

“We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.”

“There is more than one kind of freedom," said Aunt Lydia. "Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.”

“Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.”

“Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out: where life grunts and shuffles, romance only sighs.”

“Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.”

“Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you've made.”

Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.”

“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”

“The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.”

“If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.”

“But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.”

“The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil”

“And she finds it difficult to believe—that a person would love her even when she isn't trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy.”

“We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?”

“Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so the guy doesn't even know he's been hurt until much later. Then he finds out. Then his dick falls off.”

“How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.”

“Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a different direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don't go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.”

“I am not your justification for existence.”

“Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.”

“You can think clearly only with your clothes on.”

“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

“But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling.”

“If he wants to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice.”

“I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.”

“What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.”

“A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.”