The house is eerily quiet. All this time I thought silence would be a welcome reprieve, but it's less comforting than I imagined. The house feels so much bigger and colder than it ever has.

It must be comforting, to have a faith like that. To believe so concretely that there’s someone—something— out there watching guard, keeping us safe, testing us only with what we can handle.

I hate organized religion. I hate that people use it to justify their crappy, bigoted beliefs.

I'm not saying he was, like, crying tears of man pain over the phone, but he sounded upset.

Sketchy black van? Weird stalking of my house? What are you going to do next, offer me some candy?

No problem. Just drop it back off before you go, " he says, procuring a brass key. "And if he puts on Bowie's early stuff and starts sweet-talking, dammit, you run. You run as fast as you can.

We should go swimming, " Anna says, out of the blue.

If you really want things to change, you can make them change no matter where you are.

He took his pain and turned it into something beautiful. Into something that people connect to. And that's what good music does. It speaks to you. It changes you.

These songs tell me I'm not alone. If you look at it that way, music...music can see you through anything.

My life is now divided into two periods: With June and After June. I can't wrap my mind around the idea of it.

Without passion everything lame in this life.

No, ” I said. “I can’t remember doing this.”“Oh, ” Rena made and gestured dramatically. “You don’t remember it. And that automatically means you didn’t do it?

All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.

It's in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness.

There is no reason why capitalists and entrepreneurs should be ashamed of earning profits.

I am not a saint or a cripple, I am not a wound; now I will see whether I am a coward.

When poverty is more disgraceful than even vice, is not morality cut to the quick?

Seth gave her that: a private space to believe in the illusion of normalcy.

It is clearly evident that most events of a widespread nature draw their causes from the enveloping heavens.

If language were liquid, it would be rushing in. Instead here we are in a silence more eloquent than any word could ever be.