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

A world that was crowded with people could still be a very lonely place.

His hand is cool on my cheek as he paints a tear beneath my left eye, dark blue and swollen with sorrow.

What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn't starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn't enough. I had a hole in me, and everything I took for granted slipped through it like sand. I felt like I had swallowed yeast, like whatever evil was festering inside me had doubled in size.

We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which.

You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?

As a child, what I was missing was so much bigger to me than what I had. My mother-mythic, imaginary-was a deity and a superhero and a comfort all at once. If only I'd had her, surely, she would have been the answer to every problem; if only I'd had her , she would have been the cure for everything that ever had gone wrong in my life.