Sadie

People don't change. They just get better at hiding who they really are.

But love is complicated, it’s messy. It can inspire selflessness, selfishness, our greatest accomplishments and our hardest mistakes. It brings us together and it can just as easily drive us apart.

Every little thing about you can be a weapon, if you're clever enough.

I wish his darkness lived outside of him, because you have to know it's there to see it. Like all real monsters, he hides in plain sight.

It was a terrible thing, sure, but we live in a world that has no shortage of terrible things. You can't stop for all of them.

And Sadie, if you’re out there, please let me know. Because I can’t take another dead girl.

I realized pretty early on that the who didn’t really matter so much. That anybody who listens to me, I end up loving them just a little.

It'll h-heal f-fine.' 'It'll heal ugly.' But most things do.

How do you forgive the people who are supposed to protect you?

I always forget fear is a conquerable thing but I learn it over and over again and that, I guess, is better than never learning it.

A body might not always be beautiful, but a body can be a beautiful deception.

I wish this was a love story. A love story about lovers whose mouths meet like two puzzle pieces fitting perfectly into place, about the electric feeling of one person's name on the other's tongue because no one has ever spoken them out loud like that before. About people who spend the night together looking at the stars until entire constellations exist within them. Everyone is perfect in that indistinct way most characters are and every perfectly constructed scene in their fictional lives is somehow more real than anything you've known or lived. Love stories, romances, leave a person secure in the knowledge they'll end Happily Ever After and who wouldn't want a story like that? I wish this was a love story because I know how it goes in one like mine, where the only moments of reprieve are the spaces between its lines.

That’s a real tragedy and I mean it. It’s sad when people don’t realize their worth

Or maybe you get so used to the mess of home, you convince yourself over time everything's exactly where it belongs.

My eyes burn, and tears slip down my cheeks and I can't even imagine how pathetic I look. Girl with a busted face, torn-up arms, begging for the opportunity to save other girls. Why do I have to beg for that?

I live in a place that's only good for leaving.

Paul taught me a person committed to silence can suggest importance, strength. So long as they’re a man, I mean. It’s not an option when you’re a girl, not unless you want people to think you’re a bitch.

We have more story than time to tell it -- but I suppose that's true for all of us.

the kind of decency everybody ought to live by isn’t something that deserves my gratitude.

I hate the people who live here. May Beth always told me I can't do that; I can't hate people for having more than me, but she's wrong. I can. I do.

People don’t change. They just get better at hiding who they really are.

It’s not about finding peace. There will never be peace.

Mattie once asked me ... she'd just come home flush from a crush on Jonah Sweeten and asked me how you know when you like someone, and if I liked any boys like she did, and I didn't know what tot tell her. That I tried not to think about that kind of stuff, because it was painful, because I thought I could ever have it, but when I did end up liking someone, it always made me ache right down to my core. I realized pretty early on that the who didn't really matter so much. That anybody who listens to me, I end up loving them just a little.

Girls go missing all the time. And ignorance is bliss. I didn’t want this story because I was afraid. I was afraid of what I wouldn’t find and I was afraid of what I would. I still am.

I stood over her crib and listened to her breathing, watching the rise and fall of her tiny chest. I pressed my palm against it and felt myself through her. She was breathing, alive. And I was too.

Places like that, places that look so nice they don't seem real? The worst shit you can imagine happens in them. And I'm not wrong.

I’m going to kill a man. I’m going to steal the light from his eyes. I want to watch it go out.

Money burns fast. Knowing that doesn't get easier with age and it's worse when you learn it young. The beauty of childhood is not entirely grasping the cost of living; food just appears in the fridge, you have a roof over your head because everyone does and electricity must be some kind of sorcery, like right out of Harry Potter or something, because who could ever put a price on light? Its that you never really had to think about any of it before. Then one day you find out you've have been walking the razor's edge all along.

...she doesn't even blink and it makes me grateful but I fucking hate that too, because the kind of decency everybody ought to live by isn't something that deserves my gratitude.