The hero surviving his own murder, his own suicide, his own addiction, surviving his own disappearance from the scene

More and more I feel like the boy who cut off his nose to spite his face.

On the way out to the car, Philip turns to me. "How could you be so stupid?" I shrug, stung in spite of myself. "I thought I grew out of it." Philip pulls out his key fob and presses the remote to...

When had it become so ingrained in her to apologize whenever she wanted something for herself?

But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen. It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm - you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going...

It seemed to him that all his life he had followed the ideals that other people, by their words or their writings, had instilled into him, and never the desires of his own heart. Always his course had...

What role was she expected to play in his life, and more important, in her own?

Phury... I was going to come find you before I left. With a towel under his chin, Z looked at his reflection in the mirror, seeing his new yellow eyes. He thought of the arc of his life and knew most...

The measuring and mixing always smoothed out her thinking processes - nothing was as calming as creaming butter - and when the kitchen was warm from the oven overheating and the smell of baking...

At twenty - two, I had the callowest possible definition of interesting and, by the measure of my own calipers, was far from interesting myself.

On reflection, though, it struck her as dishonest, like serving people ice cream on their first night at the fat farm. Hey, have some more hot fudge! You're gonna love it here at Camp Lose - a - Lot!

always meant to run away someday.

You're not a monster. You're a mirror.

How wearisome to let one's existence become something absolutely dependent on someone else's feelings; to have no option but to feel, to love a little too, whether or not it is reciprocated.

When your words are futile, you're better off keeping them to yourself

Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

No, I don't think I could fall in love with him, handsome though he is, because I don't accept any of that huff he gives me about my great beauty and all that. I'd have to trust a man's words before I...

If I'd had any way of knowing that things were - as Lily Tomlin once said - going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse, I'm not sure how I would have slept that night.

I don't like to bust drunk drivers. I don't like to listen to their explanations, watch their pitiful attempts to affect sobriety, or see the sheen of fear break out in their eyes when they realize...

Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no...

How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it?

I'd never been much of an athlete, due to a physical condition I'd had since birth {unathleticism}. Perhaps if there were a sport centered around lying on your couch in a neurotic stupor all day, I'd...

I looked in the mirror and realized that I was already dead. I let you kill me one piece at a time, starting when I was, what? Eight years old? Nine? You killed yourself and then you came after us.

Many things happened in my life, and I thought that they changed me. But in the end, nothing has changed since I was seventeen. If I could keep today's happiness I wouldn't worry about tomorrow.

Our contradictions are never so to ourselves.

Decker blinked awake and sat up in his bed. He looked around, for a few moments unsure of where he was. Virginia. Quantico. The FBI gig. Right. He got up and padded to the bathroom. After that he...

I AM ALWAYS ALONE. BUT JUST NOW I WANT TO BE ALONE BY MYSELF.

Received a gift - it was the first decent piece of instruction about marriage I had ever been given in my twenty-five years of life. Does your husband make you a better person? Edra asked. There I was...

Makes sense to me. Sometimes starting over is exactly what a person needs. And I think it's admirable. A lot of people don't have the courage it takes to do something like that.

Tessa was convinced that it was a lie, and also that everything she had done in her life, telling herself that it was for the best, had been no more than blind selfishness, generating confusion and...