“Asking me to describe my son is like asking me to hold the ocean in a paper cup”

“What could you give me," I ask, my voice shaking, "to make me forget ... that you forgot about me?”

“If you ask me, music is the language of memory”

“My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together?Bread, of course.”

“ Where is this going to take me? she had asked. And Caleb's answer: Where do you want it to?”

“The optimist in me wants to believe sexuality will eventually become like handwriting: there’s no right way and wrong way to do it. We’re all just wired differently. It's also worth noting that when you meet someone, you never bother to ask if he’s right or left-handed. After all: does it really matter to anyone other than the person holding the pen?”

“Every life has a soundtrack.There is a tune that makes me think of the summer I spent rubbing baby oil on my stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. There's another that reminds me of tagging along with my father on Sunday morning to pick up the New York Times. There's the song that reminds me of using fake ID to get into a nightclub; and the one that brings back my cousin Isobel's sweet sixteen, where I played Seven Minutes in Heaven with a boy whose breath smelled like tomato soup. If you ask me, music is the language of memory.”