What does it feel like?” he asked. “What does what feel like?” Peter thought for a moment. “Being at the top.” Josie reached across him for another packet of material and fed it into the stapler. She did three of these, and Peter was certain that she was going to ignore him, but then she spoke. “Like if you take one wrong step,” she said, “you’re going to fall.

How can you be a survivor, when you can't even remember the war?

She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else.

What if love wasn't the act of finding what you were missing but the give-and-take that made you both match?

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

Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started.

Isn't it amazing how, when you strip away everything, people are so much alike?