Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.

When you have been burned by fire once, you don't leap into the flames again.

And the very act of living is a tide; at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded

The best thing about endings is knowing that just ahead is the daunting task to start over.

I wondered what happened when you offered yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover you were not the gift they expected and they had to smile and nod and say thank you all the same.

I think that when you live in a world with limits... when you've met everyone and seem everything you're going to see - you lose the hope that something extraordinary will happen in your life

I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet.