“Children don’t require of their parents a past and they find something faintly unbelievable, almost embarrassing, in parental claims to a prior existence.”

“Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street. ”

“She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else.”

“You can’t help who your parents are or aren’t. My parents aren’t—they don’t exist and have never existed.”

“First we are children to our parents, then parents to our children, then parents to our parents, then children to our children”

“Ronan taught me that children do not exist to honor their parents; their parents exist to honor them. [...] Ronan was mine but he never belonged to me. This is not an issue of ownership. A child is not a couch.”