Vanessa Diffenbaugh

“This time, there was no escape, I could not turn away, could not leave without accepting what I had done. There was only one way to the other side, and that was through the pain.”

“Her eyes were open, taking in my tired face... Her face twitched into what looked like a squinty smile, and in her wordless expression I saw gratitude, and relief, and trust. I wanted, desperately, not to disappoint her.”

“Hate can be passionate or disengaged; it can come from dislike but also from fear.”

“Over time, we would learn each other and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots.”

“In that moment, we were the same, each of us destroyed by our limited understanding of reality.”

“If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously, as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.”

“It wasn't as if the flowers themselves held within them the ability to bring an abstract definition into physical reality. Instead, it seemed that...expecting change, and the very belief in the possibility instigated a transformation.”

“Common thistle is everywhere,” she said. “Which is perhaps why human beings are so relentlessly unkind to one another.”

“Here you are, obsessed with romantic language-a language invented for expression between lovers-and you use it to spread animosity.”

“Anyone can grow into something beautiful.”

“You should see the way she smiles when I rattle off the names of the orchids in the greenhouse: oncidium, dendrobium, bulbophyllum, and epidendrum, tickling her face with each blossom. I wouldn't be surprised if 'Orchidaceae' was her first word.”

“Prese un giglio tigre arancione da un secchio. «Per te» mi disse porgendomelo. «No non mi piacciono i gigli» risposi. E non sono una regina pensai. «Dovrebbero piacerti» replicò. «Ti si addicono.»”

“I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and with out roots.”

“Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.”

“I felt my true, unworthy self to be far away from his clutching grasp, hidden from his admiring gaze.”