“Oh, it was delicious to have someone to keep secrets with. If I'd had a sister or a brother closer in age, I guessed that's what it would be like. But it wasn't just smoking or skirting around Mother. It was having someone look at you after your mother has nearly fretted herself to death because you are freakishly tall and frizzy and odd. Someone whose eyes simply said, without words, You are fine with me.”

“If I could give you one thought, it would be to lift someone up. Lift a stranger up--lift her up. I would ask you, mother and father, brother and sister, lovers, mother and daughter, father and son, lift someone. The very idea of lifting someone up will lift you, as well.”

“Sometimes I think I spent forever waiting for you,' he says. 'My whole life, I've never had someone like you. Someone who doesn't have to be there, but is anyway. Someone who wants to just ... be with me because they want me. For me. Not because I'm your brother or your kid or anything, but because you choose me.”

“It was delicious to have someone to keep secrets with”

“When I was your age I knew nothing about the world or my place in it. I figured I'd be someone's wife, then someone's mother. It never occurred to me to be someone myself.”

“Good,' she said. Then she exhaled a long breath and leaned back in her seat. 'I can't believe I just talked to you like that. Ugh. I sounded like someone's mother.' She said "mother" like she was talking about cockroaches or snakes.'It was pretty impressive,' I said. 'I never would have guessed you were an amateur.”