People always talked about a mother's uncanny ability to read her children, but that was nothing compared to how children could read their mothers.

When you have children, you're obligated to live.

Something was wrong with a world where people came and went so easily.

I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.

I remember leaving the hospital - thinking, 'Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don't know beans about babies! I don't have a license to do this.' We're just amateurs.

...if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad.

Sooner or later, even the sharpest pain became flattened.