“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.”

“When your mother and your father are having a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you just want them to stop fighting?”

“And he wants you to keep that at the front of your mind? He wants you to stay focused on the darkest seasons of your life? How could that possibly do any good?'. . . He wants you to remember who delivered you from that time. That's the point of holding on to memory: delivery, not darkness.”

“My father has always broken the rules for those he loves, just as my mother has always kept them for the same reason. [...] 'We can't give you the life you want,' my father says, his eyes wet. He looks at my mother and she nods at him to continue. 'We wish we could. But we can help you have a chance to decide which life you want.”

“You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father.”

“If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.”