“...what John likes best are the small and undramatic moments that make for a kind of easy comfort, for a feeling of being grounded in arelationship.”

“Once you start making decisions in which your heart, mind, and soul are congruent, you'll feel it as a kind of lift, if not liftoff.”

“...and there is such honesty and innocence to her voice I want to hold her. The bedside lamplight is a rich golden color, and it is falling on her face in a way that makes it seem gilded. For a moment, L.D. looks to me like an angel. Another case of illusion only being the larger truth.”

“The things that brought me the most comfort now were too small to list. Raspberries in cream. Sparrows with cocked heads. Shadows of bare limbs making for sidewalk filigrees. Roses past their prime with their petals loose about them. The shouts of children at play in the neighborhood, Ginger Rogers on the black-and-white screen.”

“Human beings. They are the ones with the most important job. They are supposed to make what they want out of what they are given.”

“I would make an anonymous call and say, this is someone who cares, do you know what kind of children you have?”

“Well, most women are full to the brim, that's all...We are, most of us, ready to explode, especially when our children are small and we are so weary with the demands for love and attention and the kind of service that makes you feel you should be wearing a uniform with "Mommy" embroidered over the left breast, over the heart...If a stranger had come up to me and said, "Do you want to talk about it? I have time to listen," I think I might have burst into tears at the relief of it.”