The Ghostwriter

“Between two naive and innocent souls, anything can happen. Soulmates or Tragedy. And sometimes, both.”

“There is nothing like young love. It comes at a time before the heart knows to protect itself, when everything important is raw and exposed—the perfect environment for a soul-sucking, heart-crushing burst.”

“Funny what you find out about people when they leave you. Or when your mind stops making excuses for all of their clues.”

“There is something soothing about the act of writing, a drug that lures you into another world, but then forgets to stop, and sometimes carries you all the way into sleepdom.”

“That is how life is, it gives us burdens to carry and doesn’t give a damn about the weight. We shoulder it or we break.”

“This is why I avoid men. This is why I avoid people in general. We are a disgusting, foul race, only a few centuries past smearing our faces with feces and dancing for rain.”

“When You Say You Are Going to Do Something, Shut the Hell Up and Do It.”

“We all have a Happily Ever After, each story just needs to pick the right time to claim it.”

“In New York, if you invite random strangers in for tea, you’ll be raped and dead within a week. I think that’s almost the way it should be; we should all have a healthy fear of each other.”

“You can become anything,” I say to her. “Make sure that you don’t become selfish, unimaginative and dumb.”

“There is nothing like young love. It comes at a time before the heart knows to protect itself, when everything important is raw and exposed—the perfect environment for a soul-sucking, heart-crushing burst. It burns brightest, hits hardest, and touches deepest. It’s why Facebook flames erupt two decades later between high school sweethearts. Between two naive and innocent souls, anything can happen. Soulmates or Tragedy. And sometimes, both.”

“Some people are just having a misfire of judgment or control. But other people are letting you see a bit of the rotten person inside. Their cruel or stupid behavior is a gift of sorts, because it lets you see the real person that they are beneath.”

“But back then, I only dreamed about, yearned for, and wrote about love. I didn't realize what a brutal beast it could be.”

“We are authors, and our lives are not the ones we live, but rather the characters that we create.”

“It had been love. From the very beginning. Wild. Crazy. Senseless. Love”

“I’d decided to believe him, but I’d never trusted him again.”

“Something stops in my chest, and the guilt is almost impossible to breathe through. I tighten my fingers around the pen and force myself to lower it to the page.”

“I delete the last line, and then the entire paragraph. Lies. I am forgetting that this is not an ordinary novel, that I can’t take fictional liberties, can’t provide clues, or lead the readers down a path I didn’t travel.”

“that’s what infuriates me about the woman, even more than her perfectly pouty lips and incessant publicity. She’s wasting her talent. She could be giving us more.”

“He doesn’t know anything yet. He knows I fell for a boy. He knows I had a baby. All he knows are the first lines of a song. He hasn’t even heard the melody yet.”

“a bookworm without friends, a condition worthy of concern.”

“I prepared him for her stiff disapproval, for her judgmental stares, for her psychoanalysis.”

“After I began to trust him, that’s when the danger really started.”

“Rule #1 could be something along the lines of When You Say You Are Going to Do Something, Shut the Hell Up and Do It.”

“You might as well ask Darth Vader to water Luke Skywalker’s plants.”

“Starbucks”

“There is nothing like young love. It comes at a time before the heart knows to protect itself,”

“It had been love. From the very beginning. Wild. Crazy. Senseless. Love.”