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“This isn’t escalation,” he said. “This is the natural and expected consequence of some very poor life choices.

I missed you Dan. And all the family.

There’s no lonelier place in the world than the captain’s chair.

“What will it take for you to accept that I am not your enemy?”

“You not killing everyone around me would be a good start.”

It wasn’t the perfect plan, but it did have the benefit of being the only plan, so on that basis alone I reckoned it was worth a try.

(I’m just saying.)

I thought I could shatter and the pieces would fall among the trees and all that would be left would be little fractals of light from the moon as it reflected off the shards that had been my whole.

“Sue me,” Daniel shouted back over his shoulder. “I like breathing more than I like being right.

“The reward for good work, as the saying goes, is more work.”

Always remember – pride is no virtue.

Our aspirations are so often influenced by our appearance. I wonder how mine might have changed me.

“There are some paths that inevitably lead to heartache, some acts that steal men’s souls, leaving them wandering forever after without them, trying to find what they lost,” he murmured, as if quoting something he’d once heard, something that had resonated with him.

He’d thought all his grief had gone. He’d thought it had moved on. And suddenly . . . it was back. Maybe grief was always like that. Maybe it kept coming back until you released it.

No one deserves to be put on a pedestal. They won’t climb down to save you, and if you’re looking up at them, you’re not looking ahead at what’s coming for you.

It was amazing, the mental somersaults minds and hearts could do to justify their actions in the name of love.

Why is it that when you’re physically vulnerable, your mind decides to become vulnerable too?

That’s the thing with trauma to the body—it shows up instantly. In breaks and bruises, in burns and in blood. But the trauma on the inside, that’s harder to see. It creeps around your mind, poisons you with disquiet. It can hit you out of nowhere, debilitating and ruinous. There are no marks visible for those. None, save the shadows in your eyes.

We tell ourselves twisted lies to tangle around our wicked truths, all so that we can get caught up in the bind and not have to face bare regrets.

But memory and time aren’t friends. They reject each other, they hurry in opposite directions, pulling the binding taut between them, threatening to snap. They fight, and we inexplicably lose. Memory and time. Always losing one as you go on with the other.

Axel was good at getting people to draw close to him by dazzling them, giving them things and attention. Then he was good at slowly taking it all away until the person was so dependent on him that they had nothing else, no one else. Nowhere to turn for help. Nowhere to hide.

I’ve spent enough time in therapy to know that this isn’t “a healthy attitude toward attachment,” but I personally feel that accepting my own imminent mortality is enough work without also having a healthy attitude about it.

I’ve got a dead body in my room and somehow I’m not the biggest mess around at this wedding.

‘Clemente, the only reward for work is more work,’

You can bring one of them down? Who cares? More of them will spring from the ground; tyrants are cheaper than dragon’s teeth in the markets of Italy. Walk away.’

I shouldn’t feel this way, but feelings very rarely care about should and shouldn’t.

She felt no pains or more than minor stings, but pain was a tricky beast, as she knew. Sometimes it took its time to officially arrive.

She felt no pains or more than minor stings, but pain was a tricky beast, as she knew.

“It’s the doom of our species that psychopaths always want to be in charge.”

When death was your only option, it made you feel very free indeed.

“Besides, I make it a rule never, never, never to use the truth unless it’s the last possible option or so outlandish that nobody would believe you anyway. Keep that in mind.”

“Sometimes, what we feared most about ourselves defined our lives. Even if it was a total falsity.”