Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2)

by Tahereh Mafi

But time is beyond our finite comprehension. It’s endless, it exists outside of us; we cannot run out of it or lose track of it or find a way to hold on to it. Time goes on even when we do not.

There’s my head, lying on the floor, cracked right open, my brain spilling out in every direction and I can’t I don’t I can’t even I’m sitting here, struck, numb, slightly dizzy.

Synonyms know each other like old colleagues, like a set of friends who’ve seen the world together. They swap stories, reminisce about their origins and forget that though they are similar, they are entirely different, and though they share a certain set of attributes, one can never be the other. Because a quiet night is not the same as a silent one, a firm man is not the same as a steady one, and a bright light is not the same as a brilliant one because the way they wedge themselves into a sentence changes everything.

Loneliness is a bitter, wretched companion. Sometimes it just won’t let go.

My head is full of missing buttons and shards of glass and broken pencil tips.

It’s a triangle of death.

hell is empty and all the devils are here

words that fell from my lips to my fingertips and bled onto a page.

“I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend,”

“The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body, Juliette—”

“The truth,” he says, “is a painful reminder of why I prefer to live among the lies.”

I’m leaving my gloves behind.