Quotes by Amy Reed

The first week is the hardest. Then little by little the world opens up, and you realize there are all these people around you with their own needs that have nothing to do with you. Then you forget, and everything’s about you again. And maybe that cycle continues for the rest of your life. Maybe the world keeps expanding and contracting. Maybe you know you’re well when it finally stays the same size.

Getting rid of the drugs doesn’t get rid of all the other ways you learned to deal with the world. It’s not that easy.

...and I know -I just know- you can remind me what it feels like to have someone look at me and love me with wanting me to be something else.

This thing that’s always been inside and hidden deep is getting bigger and stronger and threatening to show itself, and I want to stop it but I also don’t, and I don’t know if I’m ready, but I think maybe I want what’s inside turned outside, maybe I want everything out in the open, all my secrets laid out for everyone to see. I wonder what that would look like. I wonder what kind of mess it would make. I wonder if you can ever really be ready for the part of you that you’ve been hiding your whole life to finally come out.

How can she stand up there so tall as she’s telling us how her mother beat her and her father molested her when she was a little girl? How is it possible for her to look so proud? How is she not being consumed by shame? She should be disintegrating before our eyes. She should be struck by lightning, and God’s big, angry, booming voice should be shaking the room with “How dare you? I told you never to tell.” But that’s not her God, she says. Her God is loving and kind and wants what’s best for her. Her God loves peace and serenity and forgiveness. Her God doesn’t make her keep secrets. I thought I knew God all my life, but maybe it was some other guy the whole time. I want this God. I want Val’s God. I want a God who doesn’t make me jump through hoops and hate myself to earn his love.

Thats what dreams are really like, you know? Theyre not full of melting clocks or floating roses or people made out of rocks. Most of the time, dreams look just like the normal world. Its your feelings that tell you somethings off. Not your mind, not your intellect, not something as obvious as that. The only part of you that really knows whats going on is the part of you thats most a mystery. If thats not Surrealism, I dont know what is.

Everyones always making fun of him and calling him crazy behind his back, but I can kind of understand how someone would end up that way. I mean, if no one ever pays attention to you telling the truth, then it probably makes sense to try lying for a change.