How seriously can I take myself? I'm just one of six billion people, right?

You have to speak your dream out loud.

Even when all the paperwork-a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns-clearly indicates you're an adult, but all the same, there you are, clutching the phone and thanking God that you're still somebody's daughter.

Raising people is not some lark. It's serious work with serious repercussions. It's air-traffic control. You can't step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle.

It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap.

Appreciation is the purest,strongest form of love. It is the outward-bound kind of love that asks for nothing and gives everything.

I didn't know adults could be changed. I thought they were finished pieces, baked through and kiln dried.