"It was an awful cliché to say that a part of her died when they found Julie Miller's body, but the thing about clichés is that they're often dead-on. My mother's crackle quieted, smothered." Chapter 1, p. 11.

"I like to think of us as neutral. Switzerland for the runaways." Chapter 4, p. 24.

"We tiptoe around upstairs, you know, like we're living on ice and we're afraid the floor is going to crack and we're all going to fall down into that basement." Chapter 14, p. 115.

"I never really understood why my parents had not moved either. I mentioned before the link between comfort and self-inflicted pain, the desire to hold on because suffering was preferable to forgetting." Chapter 14, p. 116.

"So this is the part where you tell me I can step away at any time? Right, and then this is the part where you say you'll stick with me to...