Val had a horrific image of Lisa peering through a magnifying glass like a grotesquely teenybopper version of Nancy Drew — in jeggings.

Life doesn’t come with an eraser. Experiences leave their mark, for better or for worse. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never been hurt.

I bask in that sympathy because it’s nice to have somebody who cares, even if it’s the wrong person for the wrong reasons.

Girls can fight with swords, too. Sometimes, even better than men can. They just have to want it badly enough that they’re willing to work harder at it.

A quick and brutal fuck from behind usually served as an effective reminder of where you stood in the pack hierarchy.

I participate in BDSM, but I wasn’t abused as a child. I don’t hate women, or particularly enjoy hurting women. Sometimes I make them feel pain, but it’s consensual, it serves a purpose—to get them off—and they can indicate that they wish me to stop at any time. I do like the power I get...

Valys also didn’t think I was good enough for him. He made that clear every time he acted like a martyr forced to settle. But what he didn’t understand was that if he thought I might not be good enough for him, he definitely wasn’t good enough for me. I was well aware of my...

If a woman defined herself solely by the man she was with—and vice versa—the world would be a very shallow and insipid place, indeed.

Being a victim is supposed to set you free; it acquits you of any agency, any sense of responsibility to the person who did you harm. It’s not your fault, they say. Leave him, they say. Nobody ever tells you what to do if leaving isn’t an option.They just call you stupid. A dumb bitch.Sympathy...

We’re so concerned with the idea of what we ought to be that we fail to take into account the things that make us who we really are.

…there was a difference between killing for nourishment and killing for curiosity or sport.

But fairytales were, at best, dirty mirrors whose warped and pitted surfaces reflected a highly distorted view of the truth, quite different from reality.

Mámá was fond of saying that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels—an aphorism I was pretty sure she’d cribbed from the thinspiration sites she subscribed to online—but I believed that anyone who said such things had never tasted chili-cheese fries with melted cheddar, fresh ground beef, and Tapatio sauce.

Nobody should have to choose between a cold heart and a dead heart.

It wasn’t that she was sad—sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing she felt was numb. And tired. Yes, she very frequently felt tired.

Being depressed and suicidal doesn’t mean wanting to kill yourself every moment of every day. It may be a fixed obsession, but sometimes it gets relegated to the back of your head. Rather, it means the world takes on the very cut and dry, black and white, unilateral aspect of a flowchart.

She has built her whole life on the foundation of beauty: each chiseled plane, each sloping dimple, each soft curve as crucial as keystones in the cathedral of her body.

You’re like a half-tamed creature, still shy of the bridle. ‘Except you enthrall me, never shall be free.’ But freedom is an illusion, anyway.

She said my glasses made me look like a butch jock’s locker room bitch.

That’s not cruel. This is. You come here in the middle of the night, expecting me to be awake, and ask—no, demand—me to give you things that belong to me as much as they belong to you. Never mind what it does to me. Never mind that each time I see you, I wonder if...

I wasn’t a complete bastard. If she liked to think she saw good in me, if she wanted to take credit for it, I’d let her. She deserved that much.

This softening she sees in me isn’t enough to make me affectionate, but it’s just enough to render me inept. I can’t give her what she wants — virtuousness — or what she needs — protection.

You would do well to guard your tongue, lest it be stricken from you.

Understanding did not provide solace or make the pain go away; in many ways, understanding was just more salt in the emotional wound. Ignorance allowed one to fight back with unfettered cruelty. Understanding inspired empathy, which led to guilt, as well as suffering.She looked at Gavin, supine, unconcerned, contented, and thought that perhaps there was...

I take my babies rare, and my virgins over easy.

I’m sorry I missed the meeting and hurt your little feely-weels okay?

Are you mad? Or have you been skulking around the bars of Barbary XIII?

People rarely ventured outside the realm of their own hurts. They believed their own suffering was obvious to all, but might as well have been wearing blinders for all that they noticed anyone else’s.

Ça va. Nap time is over.

He was everything your mother warned you about when she told you not to walk alone in the dark.

Be careful what you wish for. Especially out loud.

Like X-Box. And X-rated movies.

Death is one lover who cannot be spurned.

Hatred is about possession. It is all-consuming, cruel, and vainglorious. When love is allowed to fester, it becomes twisted and corrupt; it settles deep in the heart…and metastasizes, sending its dark roots through the body to raze all that stands in its way. Love is chaste and pure. Love is banal….No, hatred has infinitely more...

I’m going to fuck you up until your mother bleeds.

Such a dark green, his eyes. They reminded her of the forest, of all the dangers lying dormant behind that verdant cloak of leaves.

What do you want to do with your life, then?” is often the question I’m asked.To be honest, I don’t know. I really don’t.Mainly because I don’t see myself living long enough for that to make much of a difference.

The villains were always ugly in books and movies. Necessarily so, it seemed. Because if they were attractive—if their looks matched their charm and their cunning—they wouldn’t only be dangerous.They would be irresistible.

You want to be free. You also want to be mine. You can’t be both.

Why did this keep happening? Why her? Perhaps there was some pheromone certain people omitted, perceivable only on a wavelength unique to those individuals who preyed on them.

If one has never known freedom, it is easy to be blind to the gridirons composing one’s cell.

Crazy people always think they’re perfectly sane. It’s what makes them so crazy; their entire delusion lies within the fact that they believe they aren’t deluded.

There is no redemption in a cruel man’s love.

You gonna count ’em out now? Because I’ll save you the trouble. There’s two.

Go make love to a tube sock.

I’m as lucky as a bed of oysters on cioppino night.

It ain’t polite to taste people. Shit.

Only the cruelest hunters set their traps with terror and trepidation.

Books make the best ersatz friendships.

All friends have secrets. We’re like three-dimensional shapes on paper; we all have hidden sides. And there’s some secrets we don’t even reveal to ourselves.