Quotes from Chapter 4

Some lines that I consider highlights from Claire's second chapter:

"I shut my eyes tightly in a moment of what I supposed passes for prayer when I'm at my very lowest. My silent petitions don't take the form of language in times liked these. I do not begin with “Dear Lord” and end with “Amen”. There is merely a succession of wants that rise to the forefront of my mind and jostle for rank. It is a rush of mingled pleading that I could no more interpret than the chatter of dolphins."

"A tiny sizzle of hope flares into being under my sternum and runs length of my arms as I seize my knife and begin immediately where I left off."

"I feel pressure mounting behind my eyes and close them tightly. For a few short seconds I am locked in battle with my unruly tear ducts."

"Gratitude floods through me, but finds no appropriate outlet. I can't very well hug a perfect stranger. I stand, searching for words, wasting precious time. I want to tell her that I couldn't be more in her debt if I were an inmate on death row and she'd just made the call to pardon me, but a simple “thank you” is all I can manage."

Chapter 3 Quotes

"I believe the usual advice in this situation is to ‘write what you know.’"

"I do not find that at all helpful as it applies only to those who, frankly, don’t know very much. If I were to ‘write what I know’, as you suggest, the product wouldn’t be a dissertation, it’d be an encyclopedia. Or at least something on the scale of Carl Sandburg’s six volume biography of Lincoln."

Chapter 2 Quotes

"She attempts to throw a wet arm around my shoulder. She misses and punches me lightly in the ear instead. I study her through sleep-swollen eyes. She doesn’t look as if she’s had an amazing night. She looks almost as if she’d been waterboarded and enjoyed it. Her generous application of eyeliner and mascara stream down both cheeks, and her usually spiky hair is plastered to her forehead and neck in dripping tendrils. When I look into her eyes, there is no genuine mirth there. They are unfocused and filled with a dull horror."

Chapter Two Quotes

"After weeks of summer drought, the rain sounds alien to me, but welcomed. It puts me in mind of a tender reunion between lovers, as if the sky were bending to kiss the parched earth in apology for staying away too long."

Chapter 1 Quotes

"The inside of my head was awash. It felt as if someone had dropped a stone directly onto my corpus callosum, sending ripples radiating outward to collide with my skull with an almost audible throb."

Chapter One Quotes

"I find that physical exertion sometimes allows me to escape my intellect, as if I could outrun the nebulae of thoughts that pollute my cerebellum."