No child really chooses his religion; it is just the luck of the draw which blanket of beliefs you are wrapped in.

There are legions of us, I realized. The mothers who have broken babies, and spend the rest of our lives wondering if we should have spared them. And the mothers who have let their broken babies go, who look at our children and see instead the faces of the ones they never met.

Life could take on any number of shapes while you were busy fighting your own demons. But if you were changing at the same rate as the person beside you, nothing else really mattered. You became each other's constant.

a public persona that might be different from what we truly feel inside... everyone wonders if they are good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, no matter how old they are. It is an archetypical moral dilemma - Do you act like yourself and risk becoming an outcast?

What's worse ...? The devil you don't know ... or the devil you do?

A fire can't burn forever. Eventually, it consumes itself.

Many people have a novel inside them, but most don't bother to get it out.