I know parental embarrassment usually stops somewhere at fifteen, but he just kept on giving me good reasons.

Another person is, at the heart of it, unknowable. And if you cannot know a person enough to always guess what they’re capable of, you certainly cannot know them enough to hold them in your hands, to control their behavior, to fight, manipulate, cajole or nurse or soothe them into doing what they should or shouldn’t. People will do what they will do. The trick is admitting your own helplessness about that little fact.

It was one of those times you feel a sense of loss, even though you didn't have something in the first place. I guess that's what disappointment is- a sense of loss for something you never had.

But my apology was a thousand apologies.

If time heals all wounds, and a book can hold a person's entire life, then you can speed up the process with a pulp time warp.

A lot of life is just surviving what happens.

Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.