“But she hadn't been able to take root. She'd remembered the wrong things, and forgotten too much. She'd remembered how to kill and how to hate, and she'd forgotten how to grow.”

“In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.”

“A bruise is how the body remembers it’s been wronged.”

“My mother thinks I'm at Kings cross right now buying drugs off a prostitute. If she knew I was on the BBC, she'd kill me.”

“Been alone so long
that I've forgotten what to do
how to make the whole thing right
and how to help if she's uptight
and when to run and when to fight...
how to make her stay the night -
that's if I ever knew.”

“She'd absolutely adored the library_an entire building where anyone could take things they didn't own and feel no remorse about it.”

“And yet, anything real, anything strong, was never easy. She'd been taught from an early age that the things that mattered most were the hardest to obtain.”

“Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.”

“V had a passing thought that she used the word "anyway" like an eraser on a crowded chalkboard. She said it whenever she needed to clear off the things she'd just shared to make room for more.”

“My mother was a strong, domineering woman, probably scared to death of the position she found herself in She was psychotic, attempting suicide several times and scaring the devil out of me as a kid with threats... One day [she] would say that she loved me, and the next day she'd scream that she was sorry I'd ever been born -- that I'd ruined her life... [She] would often stuff her mouth with cotton and hold her breath, pretending that she was dead, to scare me when I was small. Sometimes she'd tell me she really could walk and during the night she was going to get up, turn on the gas jets, and kill us both. I would be absolutely terrified... And yet... she encouraged my writing and would tell me that I was a good kid and she didn't know why she acted that way... but then she'd do it again.”