Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - and the honesty - to break them down.

Any highway . . . they all take you to the same place, don't they?

The first question she was asked was What do you do? as if that were enough to define you. Nobody ever asked you who you really were, because that changed. You might be a judge or a mother or a dreamer. You might be a loner or a visionary or a pessimist. You might be the victim, and you might be the bully. You could be the parent, and also the child. You might wond one day and heal the next.

I understand better than she'd imagine that history is indelible. You can mask it; you can patch it smooth and clear; but you always know what's hidden underneath.

If there's something as good as [him] in my life, I'm going to pay for it.

Chicken,' Josie said. 'Have you ever been in love?' Peter looked at Josie, and thought of how they had once tied a note with their addresses to a helium balloon and let it go in her backyard, certain it would reach Mars. Instead, they had received a letter from a widow who lived two blocks away. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I think so.

I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father," she whispers. Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who love you unconditionally, don't you think?