Plutselig tenker jeg at det er nå eller aldri. Og jeg kan ikke lenger leve med aldri.

Jeg ba ikke om å være her, men jeg er glad jeg får lov. Men alt jeg gjør, må jeg gjøre for meg.

(..) jeg gjør dem om til ett menneske, menneskene jeg har elsket, trodd jeg kunne elske, slår seg sammen, alle tidligere forelskelse vokser sammen til én forestilling, som greinene på et tre vokser ned i stammen, forsvinner under jorda, jeg begraver dem der (..)

"Nå må jeg være den løven jeg ikke er." <3

Jeg sitter på en benk og ser på alle folkene. Det gjør meg godt å se at det fins så mange mennesker som ikke er meg. At det fins så mange andre. Jeg føler ømhet for dem. De fleste gjør så godt de kan.
Jeg gjør så godt jeg kan.

Traumer fører til en splittelse mellom kropp og bevissthet, og kroppen min oppførte seg slik den hadde blitt tvunget til da jeg var barn. Brikkene falt på plass, en etter en, da det begynte å synke inn i meg hvordan jeg som barn hadde måttet flykte vekk fra kroppen og fortvilet prøve å gjøre de voksne glade ved å være snill og flink.

“I’m probaly going to be crazy for the rest of my life, thanks to her. I’m going to keep making fucked-up decisions and doing weird things that I don’t even realize are weird. People are going to feel sorry for me, and I won’t ever have any normal relationships - and it’s always going to be because I didn’t have a mother. Always. That’s the ultimate kind of broken. The kind of damage you never recover from. I hope she feels terrible. I hope she never forgives herself.”

I fell in love with him. But I don't just stay with him by default as if there's no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.

Eleanor was right, she didn’t look nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

olivia reminds me of a bird sometimes, how her feathers get all ruffled when she's mad. and when she's fragile like this, she's a little lost bird looking for it's nest.
so i give her my wing to hide under.

She kissed me all over my face. She kissed my eyes that came down too far. She kissed my cheeks that looked punched in. She kissed my tortoise mouth.
She said soft words that I know were meant to help me, but words can't change my face.

"Like a lamb to the slaughter": Something that you say about someone who goes somewhere calmly, not knowing that something unpleasant is going to happen to them.
I Googled it last night. That's what I was thinking when Mrs. Petosa called my name and suddenly it was my turn to talk.

I came to Italy pinched and thin. I did not know yet what I deserved. I still maybe don't fully know what I deserve. But I do know what I have collected myself of late - through the enjoyment of harmless pleasure - into somebody much more intact.

But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favorite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?

But I can't look away and he can't seem to either. Time has slowed so much that I wonder if when we stop staring at each other we will be old and our whole lives will be over with just a few measly kisses between us.

Something occurs to me then: Bailey loved both Toby and me so much - he and I almost make up her whole heart, and maybe that's it, what we were trying to do by being together, maybe we were trying to put her heart back together again.

The first thing I notice is the sky, so full of blue and the kind of brilliant white clouds that make you estatic to have eyes. Nothing can go wrong under this sky.

I’ve never once thought about the interpretative, the storytelling aspect of life, of my life. I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever. You can tell your story any way you damn well please. It’s your solo.

There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. For years. For their whole lives. I don't believe time heals. I don't want it to. If I heal, doesn't that mean I've accepted the world without her?

But then I think about my sister and what a shelless turtle she was and how she wanted me to be one too. C'mon, Lennie, she used to say to me at least ten times a day. C'mon, Len. And that makes me feel better, like it's her life rather than her death that is now teaching me how to be, who to be.