“Most of our parents wanted the best for us, I knew, but we also wanted the best for them.”

“Shakti always said we should have a guy we wanted to keep shaving our legs for. I knew what she meant." pg. 129”

“I knew something else, too: It's human nature to want to help and soothe and save with your love, but it's also arrogant.”

“Maybe we all just wanted someone to believe in. That's all each of us wanted, and it should be so simple, but it never was simple.”

“Our memories and the events of our lives are untidy things. We wish that we could file them away and shut the door, or we wish the opposite - that they would stay with us forever. You want to banish the remembrance of a tight hold on your ankle, a rope under a bed, the amber-colored medicine bottles of your father, the door your mother slams after a night of too much wine and jealousy. You want to keep close to you always that first sweet kiss, a maple leaf, that growing sense of yourself; you want to hold the sight of your dying father on that last boat trip, the calm you remember as your mother held you. Her voice.”

“It made me wonder how many times we forgive just because we don't want to lose someone, even if they don't deserve our forgiveness.”

“Maybe we all just want to feel special, even for a little while, to be fooled for a bit into feeling something besides the truth of our own ordinariness.”