Quotes from Jason Rekulak

We don't know how much our bodies can endure until we make cruel demands of them.

It was one of those ideas that doesn't sound stupid until someone says it out loud.

seemed so epic. But I mentioned the challenges to Adrian's mother and she gave me some good advice. She said I shouldn't try to write a book, I should just sit down at my laptop and tell the story, one sentence at a time, using the same language I'd use to tell a friend over coffee. She said it was okay not to sound like J. K. Rowling. It was fine if I sounded like Mallory Quinn from Philadelphia.

So we stood up there for a long while, watching the sunset and discussing how it was one of those things you could never truly capture in 8-bit, not with the simplistic definition of violet (CHR$(156)), orange (CHR$(129)), and yellow (CHR$(158)). There were too many other colors, thousands of colors. The hardware could never do justice to it.

I see her every night," Teddy says. "She sleeps under my bed so I can hear her singing.

We were supposed to be businessmen coming off the train after a long day in Manhattan, but Alf looked like he was ready to seize cocaine from a Colombian drug lord.

hardest things about recovery is coming to terms with the fact that you can't trust your brain

Heroin is such a big scary word but it feels like Oxy at a fraction of the price. You just have to get past any squeamishness regarding needles. Fortunately, there were plenty of YouTube videos to help me along—tutorials (ostensibly for diabetics) showing how to find a vein and how to gently draw back the plunger at just the right moment, to make sure you've made contact with the bloodstream

What do you say?" "Gesundheit. Or 'to your health.' It means the same thing.

A woman was murdered. Annie Barrett. She was an artist, a painter, and she used your house as her studio.

Her eyes are cold and calculating. She regards me like I'm a stain on the floor, a blemish that needs to be rubbed

Protecting you, Mallory. I've always protected you. Don't you remember your job interview? All those rude and nasty questions about your qualifications? I was trying to scare you away. I tried scaring all the candidates away. But you were persistent. You really wanted to be here. And Caroline thought you were the solution to all our problems.

The Impossible Fortress that you can play for free at my author website, jasonrekulak.com. My high score is 11,358 and I hope you'll leave me a note if you beat it.

I'm grateful to the judge who sent me to rehab instead of prison.

I want to learn everything about you. I want to change my major to Mallory Quinn and learn as much as I can.

There are plenty of things that a teenage boy doesn't tell his mother. As we get older, there are more and more things we hold back, things too hard to say or too embarrassing to explain. We do this to protect our mothers as much as ourselves, because let's face it—most of our thoughts are truly unthinkable.

Of course you understand. You're a very empathetic person. That's why you're such a great mother." "I'm not a mother yet." "You'd make a great mother. You're kind, you're caring, and you'd put the

Don't get me wrong, Mallory. She's a good person. She has a big heart. And she would do anything for Teddy's well-being. But this is not the life I wanted. I never signed on for any of this.

Just Ted? My sense was that he worked in a big Center City skyscraper full of secretaries and fancy computers and big glass windows overlooking Rittenhouse Square.

He's not burying you, Mallory. He's freeing you. Excavating you from a mountain of heroin and bringing you back to society. And look at you now!

But you're wrong about these pictures, you're wrong about this house, and you're wrong about Teddy. There is some seriously weird shit happening right under your nose and you're living in denial!

scanning the selection of movies, but suddenly they all seem fake and horrible and awful—full of false promises and bullshit happy endings.

The doctors prescribed OxyContin for the pain—a single forty-milligram tablet twice a day. Everyone said I would be fine for winter track in November.

Over several months, the drug had completely rewired my brain, hijacking more and more of my pain receptors, and now I needed OxyContin simply to exist. I couldn't sleep, or eat, or focus in class. And no one warned me this was going to happen. No one told me to expect a struggle.