If you read a book that's fiction and you get caught in the characters and the plot, and swept away, really, by the fiction of it - by the non-reality - you sometimes wind up changing your reality as well. Often, when the last page is turned, it will haunt you.

Rest easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.

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

And I think, not for the first time, that what is immoral is not always wrong.

They ask, how could this happen here? Well. How could it not happen here?

When you love someone - when you create a child with him - you don't just suddenly lose that bond. Like any other energy, it can't be destroyed, just channeled into something else.

Do you remember the summer we signed you up for camp? And the night before you left, you said you've changed your mind and wanted to stay home? I told you to to get a seat on the left side of the bus, so when you pulled away, you'd be able to look back and see me there waiting for you." I press her hand against my cheek, hard enough to leave a mark. "You get that same seat in Heaven. One where you can watch me, watching you.