“Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.”

“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.”

“We have better things to do. We realize life is not just a dress rehearsal and if you realize it, you don't need a bumper sticker to remind you.”

“I was right at the edge of their circle, like the tail of a Q...”

“It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.”

“I admired that stride; it was like he folded space in two with it.”

“I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.”