She may have looked normal on the outside, but once you'd seen her handwriting you knew she was deliciously complicated inside.

Chunks of his life fell away, so that while we were moving ahead in time, he was moving back.

It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.

We knew the pain of winter rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuriating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled to compliment each other.

You never get over it, but you get to where it doesn't bother you so much.

It's often said that a traumatic experience early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, "Stay there. Don't move.

I was beginning to understand something about normality. Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself. But people-and especially doctors- had doubts about normality. They weren't sure normality was up the job. And so they felt inclined to give it a boost.