“She wanted to climb out of her life as if it were a seashell she could abandon on a shore and walk away from, barefoot.”

“And the fact that everyone had a story behind some mark on their insider or outside suddenly exhausted me, the gravity of all those untold pasts.”

“No matter how safe and beautiful it is, a cage is still a cage.”

“Reading is the perfect escape from whatever ails you.”

I am not ruined. I am ruination.