The Tenth Circle

You couldn't have strength without weakness, you couldn't have light without dark, you couldn't have love without loss

Change is a funny thing. We never are quite sure what we are becoming or even why. Then one day we look at ourselves and wonder who we are and how we got that way. Only one thing about change remains constant...it is always painful

What if love wasn't the act of finding what you were missing but the give-and-take that made you both match?

As it turned out, hell wasn't watching the people you love get hurt; it was coming in during the second act, when it was already too late to stop it from happening.

All teenagers knew this was true. The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what doors hadn't yet been slammed in your face. For years, parents tell you that you can be anything, have anything, do anything. That was why she'd been so eager to grow up-until she got to adolescence and hit a big fat wall ofreality. As it turned out, she couldn't have anything she wanted. You didn't get to be pretty or smart or popular just because you wanted it. You didn't control your own destiny, you were too busy trying to fit in.

What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you'd never forget?

Relationships always sounded so physically painful: you fell in love, you broke a heart, you lost your head. Was it any wonder that people came through the experience with battle scars?

Superheroes were born in the minds of people desperate to be rescued.

It was possible that a miracle was not something that happened to you, but rather something that didn’t.

You signed no contract to become a parent, but the responsibilities were written in invisible ink. There was a point when you had to support your child, even if no one else would. It was your job to rebuild the bridge, even if your child was the one who burned it in the first place.

The saddest day in the world will be the one when she stops pretending.

The best relationships were the ones where both sides went out of their way to make sure the other wasn't disappointed.

It's crazy, right? To love someone who's hurt you? It's even crazier to think that someone who hurts you loves you.

Add love, and all the lines between right and wrong were bound to disappear.

It was a catch-22: If you didn’t put the trauma behind you, you couldn’t move on. But if you did put the trauma behind you, you willingly gave up your claim to the person you were before it happened.

Betrayal was a stone beneath a mattress of thr bed you shared, something you felt digging into you no matter how you shifted position. What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you'd never forget?

it was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be.

But as he grew older, he learned that a word was a powerful thing. An insult didn't have to be shouted to bleed; a vow didn't have to be whispered to make you believe. Hold a thought in your head, and that was enough to change the actions of anyone and anything that crossed your path.

There were some people who hit your life so hard, they left a stain on your future.

There was a fine line between love and hate you heard that cliche all the time. But no one told you that the moment you crossed it would be the one you least expected. You'd fall in love and crack open a secret door to let your soul mate in. You just never expected such closeness one day to feel like an intrusion.

Mistakes are something that happen by accident. You didn't walk out the door one morning and fall into some guy's bed. You thought about it, for a while. You made that choice.

No matter how much you consumed, you would not have your fill.

The thing that most people didn't understand, if they weren't in his line if work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive.

She was forced to consider the startling fact that the love of her life might not actually be someone with whom she could spend a lifetime.

Just because you didn't speak the facts out loud didn't erase their existence. Silence was just a quieter way to lie.

She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else.

If it's us", she whispered, "how come you get to decide?" When he didn't answer - couldn't answer - she turned and stared out the front window. As it turned out, they were still in the parking lot. They hadn't gotten anywhere at all.

Add love, and a person might do something crazy. Add love, and all the lines between right and wrong were bound to disappear.

Crazy girls did this, girls who walked like zombies through YA novels. But. Trixie felt the sting of the skin as it split, the sweet welling rise of blood. It hurt, though not as much as everything else idd.

Life could take on any number of shapes while you were busy fighting your own demons. But if you were changing at the same rate as the person beside you, nothing else really mattered. You became each other's constant.