...There were no measures that truly protected against disaster you simply held on to what mattered and hoped that you found your way to the other side.

Criticism is like dissecting a dead frog," Caleb said when the book was published. "They're examining all the guts and shit and organs, when the thing that really matters, whatever it was that animated the body, has long since left. It does nothing for the art.

It is strangely wonderful to feel the lack of something instead of believing that it was never there in the first place.

The simplest things are the hardest to understand.

Was this how trauma worked? she wondered. Those closest to it remained dumbfounded by the fact that those who weren't present could derive meaning from it?