When you want something bad, you'll tell yourself a thousand lies.

It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know what to do once she'd found it.

An item that looks perfectly normal on the surface might only be disguised.

It was always easier for me to show love than to say it. The word reminded me of pralines: small, precious, almost unbearable sweet. I would light up in his presence; I felt like a sun in the constellation of his embrace. But trying to put what I felt for him into words diminished it somehow, like pinning a butterfly under glass, or videotaping a comet.

My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn't a social construct but an instinct.

Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence.

Life was all about being in a certain place, at a certain time.