“The only thing Jess really cared about were those two children and letting them know they were okay. Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you,”

I thought anything might happen if I wasn’t vigilant. I didn’t eat. I didn’t go out. I didn’t want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul.

My nerve endings seemed to have come alive; they almost jangled with anticipation I was going to see Will. Whatever else,

If all we are allowed is hours, minutes, I want to be able to etch each of them on to my memory with exquisite clarity so that I can recall them at moments like this, when my very soul feels blackened.

I realized I was afraid of living without him. How is it you have the right to destroy my life, I wanted to demand of him, but I’m not allowed a say in yours? But I had promised.

There are normal hours, and then there are invalid hours, where time stalls and slips, where life—real life—seems to exist at one remove.

She does not want to feel even the faintest temptation to call his mobile number, as she had done obsessively for the first year after his death so she could hear his voice on the answering service.

You know, you spend your whole life feeling like you don’t quite fit in anywhere.

I wanted to press every bit of me against him. I wanted to will something into him. I wanted to give him every bit of life I felt and force him to live.

I let him know a hurt had been mended in a way that he couldn’t have known, and for that alone there would always be a piece of me indebted to him.

I frowned at the list. “So… I’ll go back and tell the Traynors that I’m going to get their suicidal quadriplegic son drunk, spend their money on strippers and lap dancers, and then trundle him off to the Disability Olympics-

… if you’re going to wear a dress like that you need to wear it with confidence. You need to fill it out mentally as well as physically.

I just tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to imprint what I had left of him on myself. I did not speak.

Sometimes, she realizes suddenly, it is simply a matter of blind faith.

Sometimes when you get hammered till the small hours you feel pretty good in the morning, but really it’s just because you’re still a bit drunk.

When you put someone down all the time, eventually they stop listening to the sensible stuff.

You all expect to live the lives you chose. Especially a successful young man like yourself. But it takes time.

Don’t ye know that ev’ry Soul on Earth feels itself to be an Orphan?

I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn’t know where else to go.

Research your idea. See if there’s a demand. A lot of people have great ideas, but they don’t know if there’s a need for it.

I played my best everyday. You never know when someone may be seeing you play for the first time.

I know that my way of tackling a character is very different.

I know that change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is forgotten.

I just want everyone to know I’m suing Ruben Studdard. He had his hand on my ass and he wouldn’t let go.

I don’t think I’m going to be an international sex symbol. I mean, I know I’m not going to be an international sex symbol.