When She Was Good (Cyrus Haven, #2)

by Michael Robotham

“Colostomy bags and potpourri. Eau de grandma.”

Men usually choose more violent suicide methods than women. They use firearms or hanging or carbon monoxide poisoning, whereas women are more likely to have a drug overdose or open their wrists in a bath.

It isn’t a cry for help. It’s a roar of pain.

The needle turns art into suffering and suffering into art and speaks to nobody except me.

Sharing a house with a paranoid schizophrenic is like carrying a time bomb that you can hear ticking, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but always ticking.

there’s a difference between being smart and clever. Smart means you know lots of shit. Clever means you can pretend you know it.

Traumatic memories are like snapshots preserved like fossils beneath layers of sediment and rock.

The greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to break apart and compartmentalize. It’s how we juggle multiple demands and how we cope with pain and trauma.

“He’s the sun to my moon. The yin to my yang. The cheese to my macaroni.”

“I think we get born with God inside us, but as we grow up, we lose bits of him. That’s why people go looking for him, but they can’t find him because they don’t know what he looks like.”

Why do people think everything will be better if they pour boiling water on dried leaves?

I’m not sure if we learn anything from history. Every generation makes the same mistakes and offers the same excuses.

The most powerful memories are the ones that re-create reality and make us relive it over and over again.

“Every day may not be good,” he said, “but there is something good in every day.”

Godwin’s Law to her, which states that the moment you evoke the name of Hitler or the Nazis in any argument, you automatically lose.

Lying is so fundamental to our existence, it is wired into our DNA. That’s why babies learn to fake cry before they’re a year old and to bluff by the age of two. By four a child is an accomplished liar, and by five, he or she realizes that truly outrageous lies are less likely to be believed.

People think they want the truth, but the opposite is true. Honesty is mean and rough and ugly, while lying can be kinder, softer, and more humane. It’s not honesty that we want but consideration and respect.

Fighting like a girl with the face of an angel and a thousand invisible scars.