Liquor doesn’t make you feel better. Just makes you not so worried about feeling bad. - James S. A. Corey

Something in the back of her head shifted. The serpent of learned helplessness long asleep starting to wake. She pretended it wasn’t there, in hopes that if she denied it enough, it wouldn’t exist.

This was the problem with thousand-year Reichs. They came and they went like fireflies.

Alex’s experience of real family—of blood relations—was more like having a lot of people who had all wound up on the same mailing list without knowing quite why they signed up for it.