I'm not sure how we got to this place, where a girl's only value is in what kind of marriage she has, how capable she is of keeping a man happy.

— Amy Engel

I want to be someone strong and brave enough to make hard choices. But I want to be fair and loving enough to make the right ones.

— Amy Engel

Life is one sick joke after another, I'm discovering. Because it hardly seems fair that it should hurt so much to finally get exactly what I've been wishing for.

— Amy Engel

My father might not have held my hand or expressed his love openly, but he taught Callie and me that we had inherent values, that we were fully formed human beings without a boy by our side.

— Amy Engel

My mission is not to make him happy and bear his children and be his wife. My mission is to kill him.

— Amy Engel

No one controls who we turn into but us.

— Amy Engel

Now I understand - how sleep allows you to forget, but your pain wakes with the dawn, worse because for a split second you don't remember what you've suffered.

— Amy Engel

Often, when I am able to check out a book, I read it a dozen times before returning it, desperate to remain lost in the magic of someone else's story.

— Amy Engel

Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or we die.

— Amy Engel

Sometimes it's a revelation, even to me, how much more comfortable I am with cruelty than with kindness.

— Amy Engel