I think once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer.

Dead isn’t angels or ghosts. It’s a physical state of breakdown, a change in all those carbon atoms that create the temporary house of a body so that they can return to their most elemental stage.

don't say it. don't tell me that nobody's going to stare at me, because they will. don't tell me it doesn't matter, because it does. and don't tell me i look fine because that's a lie.

There are legions of us, I realized. The mothers who have broken babies, and spend the rest of our lives wondering if we should have spared them. And the mothers who have let their broken babies go, who look at our children and see instead the faces of the ones they never met.

Maybe the reason I've never died in this story is that I've never had something worth dying for before.

Every life has a soundtrack.

That's the crazy thing about lies. You start to fall for them, yourself.