“I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me, I am not happy, help me -- like a message in a bottle sent in each meal to the eater, and I got it. I got the message.”

“But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why.”

“Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.”

“I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.”

“He said, I always thought the woman I’d marry would hit me easy, in a bolt of lightning, and there is not lightning there is not even thunder there is not even rain.”

“Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children... It was a fleeting statement, one I didn't think she'd hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.”

“I peeled the skin off a grape in slippery little triangles, and I understood then that I would be undressing every item of food I could because my clothes would be staying on.”