“After a lifetime of wanting to be loved, she didn't think she could bear it if it finally happened just before she was about to die.”

“My life was being planned in sentences that started with 'We' instead of 'I', yet it felt like the most natural transition in the world.”

“Look at this beautiful world!”

“Sometimes it was hard to breathe, knowing how small my world could be. Maybe in San Francisco it wouldn't feel like the universe was conspiring to keep me in a bubble.”

“My eyes roved over the walls covered with my collages and prints of famous paintings. Magritte, Kandinsky, Kahlo. My origami shapes hung from fishing wire, dangling over my bed. They shivered in the slight breeze blowing through my open window. It was my own little escape pod, but none of it was enough tonight.”

“I've never been somewhere I belonged, but there are places where I think I could be happy. Like San Francisco. Well, do art museums count? Because I feel like I belong in them.”

“I thought of all the summer evenings I'd spent sitting in the chairs under the trees beside the trailer, reading books that helped me escape Creek View, at least for a little while. Magical kingdoms, Russian love triangles, and the March sisters couldn't have been further away from the trailer park.”

“A little bit closer to the stars, anything seemed possible.”

“Somehow, the pain and rage and confusion of the past eighteen years dissolves until all that is left is this one perfect moment; unscripted, unedited, it's ours and ours alone.”

“You know those primitive tribal people who believed a camera could steal your soul? Turns out they were right.”

“Hate is a lot like love. It's warm and fills you up until every part of you is tingling to release it.”