Perhaps when it comes to it, no one is just the worst thing they ever did.

When he wakes sometimes from dark dreams of broken cradles, and compasses without bearings, he pushes the unease down, lets the daylight contradict it. And isolation lulls him with the music of the lie.

There are times when the ocean is not the ocean – not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: fierceness on a scale only gods can summon.

Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can’t tell which is which until you’ve shot ’em both, and then it’s too late.

You don’t think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour, and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation.

Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it’s done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.

When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear. Rules and laws fly straight out the window.

To have any kind of a future you’ve got to give up hope of ever changing your past.

That’s how life goes on – protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame.

Once a child gets into your heart, there’s no right or wrong about it.