This must be what an addict feels like, I think, trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just grab the book and open it, hungrily reading the story.

And the very act of living is a tide; at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded

Hunger, she often tells me, has nothing to do with the belly and everything to do with the mind. What Mary really runs isn't a bakery, but a community.

Sometimes there aren't words. The silence between us is flung wide as an ocean. But I manage to reach across it, to wrap my arms around him.

If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.

Why are you doing this to yourself? When something bad happens, why do you have to pick at it until it bleeds all over again?

There is no cosmic scale on which you can weigh your actions; you learn too late what choices ruin the fragile balance.