[There's a] point where you have to leave the dough alone. It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself.

What you had could never make up for what you'd lost.

If he says jump, she doesn't even ask "How high?" She goes out and buys a pogo stick.

My mother moves so fast I do not even see it coming. But she slaps my face hard enough to make my head snap backward. She leaves a print that stains me long after it’s faded. Just so you know: shame is five-fingered.

I have no idea what Andrew might have done, and I do not ask. She believes that I can fix this, and like always, that's enough to make me think that I can. "I'll take care of it,: I say, when what I really mean is: I'll take care of you.

I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination.

That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one