Everything I ever said to you was true and is true.

The bottom had arrived. She crashed against it, but it brought no sense of closure or understanding. She just lay there at the bottom looking up. She knew there must be a very tiny circle of light up there somewhere, but just now she couldn’t see it.

Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever.

Sometimes you need to make a mess. -Loretta, the Rollinses' hosekeeper

No matter how far back you cut a willow tree, it will never really die.

But it was smell that carried memory.

I sometimes think the stronger you feel about someone, the harder it is to picture their face when you are away from them.