“Family was even a bigger word than I imagined, wide and without limitations, if you allowed it, defying easy definition. You had family that was supposed to be family and wasn't, family that wasn't family but was, halves becoming whole, wholes splitting into two; it was possible to lack whole, honest love and connection from family in lead roles, yet to be filled to abundance by the unexpected supporting players.”

“The world was large, so large. Bigger than it had been before. Family, too, a bigger word. That felt like a good thing. An essential thing. There was power in numbers.”

“I didn't know what I wanted to Be...A sense that I had permanently botched things already, embarked on the trip without the map. and it scared me too, that I might end up as a mother of 3 working in a psychiatrist's office, or renting surfboards...I guess I saw their lives as failed somehow, absent of the Big Win...What is fate was an inherited trait? What if luck came through the genetic line, and the ability to "succeed" at your chosen "direction" was handed down, just like the family china? Maybe I was destined to be a weed too.”

“It doesn't matter if we're young. If you love someone, and it's right...We can make it the whole way, Crick.”

“It is easy to dump all the problems and responsibilities of a family on a single member. Yet when we look at David’s family we can see that the whole family needed to deal with a number of issues. Let’s look at a few of them: 1. Each member of the family has hurts. Each member of the family needs help. There is no such thing as a scapegoat. It is easy for a family to designate one of its own.”

“A new person in your life gives the rest of you a chance to be new, too. Your life can be whatever you want it to, from there on out. I leaned in and kissed and that is who I was to him, not shy, but bold. Not inhibited, but brave. I was that to him and so I kept being that. It was what I thought he wanted and what he was attracted to, and yet it was this, this exact thing I wasn't even really, that made him the most insecure.”

“Sometimes that's all you need. To know it's not broken. To know you're still whole and that you'll heal.”