Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care... -Wintergirls

You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl.

I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don’t want to die.

We turned us into wintergirls, and when she tried to leave, I pulled her back into the snow because I was afraid to be alone.

There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.

I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.

So, she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.

They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs.

In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.

Write about the emotions you fear the most.

Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.

Do we ever get slow rain?

..I marvelled at the intense beauty of this human relationship that was born out of so much love and was destined, perhaps inevitably, to end in a tragedy of such terrible proportions.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

In high school, my sister went out with the captain of the chess team. My parents loved him... They figured that any guy that took hours to make a move was okay with them.

There are only patterns. Patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns, patterns hidden by patterns, patterns within patterns.

The value of a man can only be measured with regard to other men.

I feel like I got a whole lot of living to do before I think about summing it up in a book.

Become a Canadian for the Great Bear by signing our charter online – join the team today to speak out for a sustainable future for the Great Bear region.

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

The basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition.