“One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that's a chair, that's a table, and yet at the same time, It's a miracle, it's an ecstasy.”

“I know from experience that beneath every peripheral girl is a central truth. She’s hiding hers away, but at the same time she wants me to see it.”

“She carried a knife inside of herself now, one that was always cutting her. She could feel it every time she swallowed, every time her thoughts strayed from the splendor of the wild.”

“Now she and I sit together in her room and eat chocolate, and I tell her that in a very long time when we both to go heaven, we should try to get chairs next to each other, close to the dessert table.”

“i'm sorry she never got her miracle.
she did get her miracle, Landon, her miracle was you.”

“Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigues, I have had my vision.”

“She feels lonely all the time, she wants to be accepted, by anyone, on any terms, but she feels apart. As if nobody who really got to know her would trust her.”

“The day that my stepfather left was hard, though. Renee sat in a chair in the living room, wearing a pair of navy shorts and a purple polo shirt. She was sobbing into her hands. Her face was pressed into the side of the chair. I thought - and I will never forget this - I don't ever want to be like that. I love my mother, but in that moment, I saw her as weak. I knew that she could survive without a man, but she wanted a partner so badly that she let him ruin her life.”

“And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.”

“Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.”