It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.

When you have a kid, you sign on for the whole package: good, bad, everything in between. you can't just dip in and out, picking and choosing the parts you want and quitting when it's not perfect.

Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?

As if he was beating me to the punch, his words living forever, while I was left speechless, no rebuttal, no words left to say.

The thing is, you can’t always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns.

And always remember how much your crazy sister loves you.

She said writting novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you'd never do it again.