There’s a room in my heart full of unpaid bills. We all have one. It’s useful to go in occasionally and open a few.

What was rage but a cover for some secret fragility, some sorrow?

One thing I’ve learned about grief: it’s like a creditor’s bill. You can put off paying, but it eventually falls due, and exacts usurious interest.

No penance could be more terrible than this. Her very heart was dead.

She still held sorrows, but she was not made of them. Her life was not a tragedy. It was a history, and it was hers.