“She loved nothing more than a man who wasn’t afraid to test them. To test her.”

I don’t want to hide. Not from you.

My eyes shut as the fire in my lungs reaches my throat.

If there ever was a time not to be fragile, this is it.

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

Darkness watches me from every angle. My only friend. From its own place within the silence, it speaks to me in a strange way.

I never claimed to be a predator, but right now she’s certainly the prey.

He was unhinged. Shameless. Everything wrong and everything right. And he held the key to my cage in his palm.

I may be unhinged, but I’m constantly working to channel my urges. It never stops, the self-restraint, the need for more.

It’s just a question. A question whose answer no longer has the power to hurt me.

Maybe I’ve dragged myself through the mud since then, but even mud hardens beneath your shoes. I must be standing on a mountain of it by now. And no one can touch me from way the hell up here.

Heartache is my constant companion, and we’re perfect for one another. Two co-dependent peas in a pod. My past and my future.

Gifts are meant to be wrapped. Honestly, it’s basic etiquette.

Hatred’s the fuel that keeps me alive.

I quickly learned I needed someone who specifically enjoyed, or at the very least could take it, when I hit that point of blinding release. Every time, I lost all sense of the control I work so hard at maintaining.

We have no use for people who don’t want to be here.

Doesn’t he know I want everything? And in return, I’ll give him all of me.

I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I’ve just done what I damn well wanted to, and I’ve made enough money to support myself, and ain’t afraid of being alone

Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.

We keep secrets from people that we love because we’re afraid of our own truth. I think sometimes we’re afraid to hurt people, because you never know. I think we’re afraid of what is, and what can’t be.

In the long run I certainly hope information is the cure for fanaticism, but I am afraid information is more the cause than the cure.

Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them… they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.

I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, and fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural . . to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid.

When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her.

Wild animals would not stay in a country where there were so many people. Pa did not like to stay, either. He liked a country where the wild animals lived without being afraid.