words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

Nathaniel closes his eyes and jumps, his arms glued to his sides like that fly's. He doesn't try to break his fall, just hits hard, because it hurts less than everything else.

Someone once told me that when you give birth to a daughter, you've just met the person whose hand you'll be holding the day you die.

It doesn't matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it’s there.

How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?

You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.