Everyone says that reading is a good thing, but Ava had started to wonder. People look at you with suspicion if they see you reading, like the reading itself shames or indicts them, like it is a plot against them.

When you love somebody you decide what you can take and what will kill you and work backward from what will kill you.

What you got and can count on your fingers can give you a cushion, a bank account, a security against universal losses. Nobody has to know the hollow spaces you shock yourself by living through.

You knowing that they know opens a wound in you, an embarrassing naked space that you can’t let just anybody witness.

The sting of not having or not having enough bores a pain black hole that sucks all the other of life’s injuries into one sharp stinging gap that you don’t need a scientist to remind you may be bottomless.

But whatever you do, don’t stay still, you’ll get stuck. That will unravel you.

These dogs didn't bother to bond with us, but stuck out their paws, not to shake hands but so we could slit their wrists and get it the hell over with. (p.51)

Life is sad, but there's some good moments and you have to live for those. That's all we got. Sylvia couldn't remember the last time she waited for a good moment instead of holding on through the bad ones for the next wave of bad to shock her into a different kind of sadness.