“She still dotted her i’s with full circles and felt genuinely thankful for every sunny day. I believed more in dark clouds, in sharp dots, in needing proof in order to feel trust.”

“THERE IT IS,’ my mother says, and what she means is that the dot we’ve been nearing for weeks, the one that’s been growing into a larger dot with two smaller dots circling it, has now become even larger than that, growing from a dot to a disc, shining back the light from its sun, until you can see the blue of its oceans, the green of its forests, the white of its polar caps, a circle of colour against the black beyond.”

“I suppose all moms have an idea who they hope their daughters will be. Like a connect-the-dots picture where you think you know what shape it will become. But then it's the daughter who draws the lines, and she might connect the dots you didn't intend, making a whole different picture. So I've gotta trust the dots she's given me, and she's gotta trust me to draw the picture myself.”

“She fell asleep, and it was a sleep as thin as the night clouds, dotted with dreams that came and went like the stars.”

“RC blinked a couple more times and admired the freckles on either side of [Honey's] nose. He would have enjoyed connecting them dot-to-dot with a felt-tip pen. In his fantasy, he would discover the meaning of life spread across her cheekbones.”

“She took off her dark glasses and squinted at me. It was as though her eyes were shattered prisms, the dots of blue and gray and green like broken bits of sparkle.”