I was still struggling to invent an alternate version of myself, someone proud and unflinching who could gaze levelly at his father and tell him his last secrets. I wanted him to know me; to have seen me. I'd been waiting until I was settled and fulfilled, so as to present myself in terms of a happiness he might understand.

Some suggestions for you :

Who has more power than a child? She can be as cruel as she wants to be. He can't.

Catherine thought Simon was in the locket, and in heaven, and with them still. Lucas hoped she didn't expect him to be happy about having so many Simons to contend with.

Women are kind of screwed, in the world, Andrew says.

There's no comfort, it seems, in the world of objects.

As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.

It's stores, it's the whole thing, all that shit everywhere, 'scuse me, that merchandise, all those goods, and ads screaming at you from all over the place, buy buy buy buy buy, and when somebody comes up to me with big hair and gobs of makeup on and says, 'Can I help you?', it's all I can do not to scream, 'Bitch, you can't even help yourself.

She could, she thinks, have entered another world. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

This, Barrett Meeks, is your work. You witness, and compile. You persevere.

Here is what unsayable about us: Jonathan and I are members of a team so old nobody else could join even if we wanted them to. What binds us is stronger than sex. It is stronger than love. We're related. Each of us is the other born into a different flesh.

It's the solitude that slays you. Maybe because you'd expected ruin to arrive in a grander and more romantic form.

Our hopes may seem unrealized, but we were in all likelihood hoping for the wrong thing.

The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.

She will never mention to Leonard that she'd planned on fleeing, even for a few hours. As if he were the one in need of care and comfort--as if he were the one in danger.

Yes, she thinks, this probably how it must feel to be a ghost. It's a little like reading, isn't it—that same sensation of knowing people, settings, situations, without playing any particular part beyond that of the willing observer.