You can blame your ugliness for keeping people at bay, when in reality you're crippled by the thought of letting another person close enough to popentially scar you even more deeply. You can tell yourself that it's safer to love someone who will never really love you back, because you can't lose someone you never had.

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.

Sometimes it made her want to put her fist through glass; other times, it made her cry a river.

People changed. Even the people you thought you knew as well as you knew yourself.

In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises.

Those eyes, they've got a history with mine. They were the first things I saw when I came to, after being hit in the skull with a baseball thrown by Patrick at Little League. They were the fortification I needed at sixteen to ride the chairlift at Sugarloaf, although I am terrified of heights. For almost my whole life, they've told me I'm doing all right, during moments when it was not in my own power to answer.

Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.