She thought she would know when it happened. But now, as she looked around, she wondered if it was really like that at all. Maybe it happened in a million different ways, when you were thinking of it and you weren't. Maybe there was no gap, no jump, no chasm. You didn't forget yourself all at once. Maybe you just looked around one time or another and you thought, Hey. And there you were.

I love that blurry place where life’s transitions are made without you even knowing it.

As the three of them walked home from the trees, nobody needed to say it, but Ama knew. They had questioned their friendship. They had searched and wondered, looking for a sign. And all along they'd had their trees. You couldn't wear them. You couldn't pass them around. They offered no fashion advantage. But they had roots. They lived.

I love her. I need her. I gave away everything I had for her. I just wanted her to know me.

A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand.

Relief is a short-lived emotion, passive and thin. The agony of doubt disappears, leaving little memory of how it really felt. Life aligns behind the new truth.

Gestating characters feels something like the mental equivalent of gestating a baby. In both cases, to create them you lose yourself. Or at least you reshape yourself to encompass them.