“Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans: once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers.”

“And if your parents have you for a reason, then that reason better exist. Because once it's gone, so are you.”

“I have a sister, so I know-that relationship, it's all about fairness: you want your sibling to have exactly what you have-the same amount of toys, the same number of meatballs on your spaghetti, the same share of love. But being a mother is completely different. You want your child to have more than you ever did. You want to build a fire underneath her and watch her soar. It's bigger than words.”

“Why is it that only in the very beginnings of a relationship are you aware of the heat coming from inside a person, of the number of inches you would have to move for your shoulders to brush as if it were an accident?”

“(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer.”

“Your problem is that you have been too honest for too long. Once you start doing it, lying is simpler than breathing.”

“Why hadn’t he realized this before? Everyone knew that if you divided realityby expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you inverted the equation-expectationdivided by reality-you didn’t get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope.Pure logic: Assuming reality was constant, expectation had to be greater than reality to createoptimism. On the other hand, a pessimist was someone with expectations lower than reality, afraction of diminishing returns. The human condition meant that this number approached zerowithout reaching it-you never really completely gave up hope; it might come flooding back at anyprovocation.”