But I guessed she would never stop wanting more for me, more from me. Maybe that's what mothers did.

For you, someone kind of quiet and mysterious-" "I'm not mysterious," I interrupted. "You are a little. And sometimes people don't know whether to interpret silence as confidence or fear. They're looking at you like you're a bug so maybe you'll feel like you are one.

So here I was expecting at the very best a cordial welcome from the girls who were prepared to fight me to the death for someone I didn’t want. Instead I was embraced.

If we just planned for everything we could, we’d make it through everything we couldn’t.

I wanted to be his dear, his darling.

You are not the world, but you are everything that makes the world good.

Sometimes I feel like we're a knot, too tangled to be taken apart.