“I had a terrible temper, after all, and though it rarely erupted, when it did it frightened me and anyone near its epicenter. It was the only crack, but a disturbing one, in the otherwise vacuum-sealed casing of my behavior.”

“It struck me there might be a reason why Helena Justina whipped along at such a cracking pace: she did not want to be stuck in the wilderness with my corpse. I thanked Jove for her ruthless good sense. I did not want my corpse to be stuck with her in any case.”

“True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers, and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life”

“Sometimes you met someone that changed the pattern, who wormed their way past the cracks in your heart, caulked them up, sealed themselves in, and stayed there. Sometimes they did it by insisting you meet them at every step, as Jamie had done to me.”

“Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book.”

“My whole life is made up of: "I'm sorry". I feel like I have to apologize to people, to things, to life itself. It's like, "I'm sorry to be here". I don't want to disturb anyone. But in my work, in the clothes I create, I'm actually telling people that I'm here. So, I guess I'm disturbing them, after all.”

“In my case, though I had an idea of what was going on - I purposely didn't see it.”

“Have you, with your work, made anyone glow? Erupted their sorrow? Evicted their woe? Have you been anyone's consolation through a night? Have you evoked unrehearsed emotion? Chiseled a crack in someone's encasement and watched them escape? Followed the muses wherever they led? Kept on creating when left for dead? Do not bother me with punctuation until you have earned your degree.”

“… there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.”

“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking.”