When it was over, she gathered him in her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life. That she had wanted to be dead all those years while her brother had been alive. That had been her sin. And this was her penance. Wanting to live when everyone else seemed dead.

You're judging her by her literacy,' Tara says. 'You're a literacist.' 'You've made that up.' Thomas Mackee packs up his stuff and stands up. 'You chicks give me the shits,' he says. 'You, on the other hand, brighten up our day,' I tell him. 'We all regard you as a god.

It's too late. Seventeen-year-olds don't need fathers. Oh god. I'm thirty-four years old and I need a father. I can't even begin to think what my daughter needs.

Do something that scares you everyday.

In the games of queens and kings, we leave our dreams at the door and we make do with what we have. Sometimes if we’re fortunate, we still manage to have a good life.

The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, "We're pregnant." I want to go around the neighborhood saying, "We're depressed." If my mum can't get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it's eating us alive.

When I grow, I'm going to be my mother.