Just because you keep something a secret doesn't mean it never happened, no matter how much you want that to be true.

Annie turned away, her eyes glittering. 'Here's what no one tells you,' she said. 'When you deliver a fetus, you get a death certificate, but not a birth certificate. And afterward, your milk comes in, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.' She looked up at me. 'You can't win. Either you have the baby and wear your pain on the outside, or you don't have the baby, and you keep that ache in you forever. I know I didn't do the wrong thing. But I don't feel like I did the right thing, either.

By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them.

From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest. Darkness, you know, is relative.

How could I not have seen this coming, when I looked into your eyes and vowed to be with you forever?

I never lose sight of the fact that before I was a writer, I was a teacher. I still am. My classroom's just gotten a little bigger.

A dutiful mother is someone who follows every step her child makes...And a good mother is someone whose child wants to follow her.