“I promise I shall never give up, and that I’ll die yelling and laughing.”

“She wasn’t happy, but then she wasn’t unhappy. She wasn’t anything. But I don’t believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing.”

“It’s funny. I still feel like a little girl . I’m still looking around to check and see what other people are doing to make sure I’m not completely different; I’m still looking around for help, hoping for a quick nudge and a whisper of advice. But I can’t seem to be able to catch anybody’s eye. Nobody else around me seems to be looking around and wondering what to do. Why is it that I feel like I’m the only person who is confused and concerned about the choices I’ve made and where I’m headed?”

“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

“I am sorry someone loved you badly, and that they made you feel like you take up more space than you deserve. I am sorry they abandoned you when you need them the most and it has made you believe that love is an awful thing that hurts.”

“Dying alone doesn’t scare her. She’s guided herself for so long. But the world without her does scare me.”

“how do you tell somebody that you may flinch every time they lean in to place their lips against yours? there are no words to describe that you have found people have bites worse than their barks, that you have given yourself as a whole and come back in parts, that you are pretty sure that the moon shares the same craters as your heart. how do you let somebody know that there is a good chance you never fully open up every time they hold your hand in theirs? there is no way to explain that your nails have been hammered into place against somebody else’s spine, that people have walked all over you without realizing you grew up as a war-zone and to this day you are covered in landmines, that when somebody says they count on you they mean they have numbered your days left by their waistline. how do you mention to somebody that wants the best for you that you have stopped believing you deserve it? you were the product of love that told you humans are meant to be terrified, you got older and understood that no strings attached meant picking at knots until they come untied, and you’ve been praying to god that if life is a tunnel that somehow you’ll come through the other side.”

“I would love you in any shape, in any world, with any past. Never doubt that.”

“Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.”

“Get a girl with a dirty mind and innocent looks.”

“I’ve always been interested in people, but I’ve never liked them.”