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“You began as an emptiness, and all your experiences are only yours. I don’t need an empty place now. It scares me to be without it,” she admitted, “but I’m not going to let another person carry my hurt. You’re a separate person now; so much so that you have your own name, and a rather lean, slightly sticky gentleman who loves you.” She paused and tipped her head at the rosy blush that crept up Mercy’s face.
Mercy clamped a hand over her mouth for a moment, giggling. Her scarlet eyes shone with tears.
Charm went on. “I wouldn’t feel right taking your life away from you. So…welcome to the world.” Charm smiled in spite of the pinch in her throat. Something that was hers, and not Pain’s.
The fragility in the air seemed to fall away with Mercy’s shaky smile. “Thank you.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“I have faith that God will show you the answer. But you have to understand that sometimes it takes a while to be able to recognize what God wants you to do. That's how it often is. God's voice is usually nothing more than a whisper, and you have to listen very carefully to hear it. But other times, in those rarest of moments, the answer is obvious and rings as loud as a church bell.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song

“How did you escape?”
It took Pain a moment to decide. She wasn’t sure she liked the answer she found. “Well, first of all you threw me away. And now I am becoming too much my own self.” She paused. “I am afraid, too. We are the same in that, at least. I don’t want to go back to sleep. I don’t want to be only an empty place. I do not think I can do it.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“They made you! They made you to control me! A childish woman who lives to be good. To be proper. To be appropriate! To do what she’s told! And every time I came to the surface you split that ‘me’ off! It isn’t the mindlock that kept you from throwing me out, it’s that I’m Charmaine and you were never part of me. And I won’t feel guilty anymore for what was done to us! I won’t feel guilty about surviving! I won’t be ashamed of what was done to me! I won’t be ashamed of remaking myself. And I won’t turn my back on myself.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard