You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else. I need you, she replied. Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.

Everyone still deserves to have their say.

The problem was , you never heard anyone say,"wow, check out the brain on that babe.

It makes Faith think of a hammock in their yard, a web of rope that she thought would unravel the first time she leaned back on it, but that managed to support her all the same.

How do you tell an adult that maybe everything wrong in the world stems from the fact that she's stopped believing the impossible can happen?

In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.

It's never the differences between people that suprise us. It's the things that, against all odds, we have in common.