“I knew I was waiting for someone I didn't understand.”

“I wanted, then, to become what I most admired, what now seemed most real to me. I wanted to be that exalted, complicated presence in someone's life, the familiar body, the source of another's existence. But I knew what I wanted was not always what I needed.”

“Sometimes you didn't know what you were after, I thought. Maybe there was a speck on the horizon and you followed it, hoping for the best.”

“I want to mother the world, I thought. I have so much love.Then—I have no business being a mother. I am a selfish woman.Then—I can do this. Millions of women have been mothers.Then—I feel very alone. I do not know what I'm capable of.”

“Mothers, I believe, intoxicate us. We idolize them and take them for granted. We hate them and blame them and exalt them more thoroughly than anyone else in our lives. We sift through the evidence of their love, reassure ourselves of their affection and its biological genesis. We can steal and lie and leave and they will love us.”

“It was a character-building week, a week that thinned my hair, put circles underneath my eyes.”

“I knew him, but I don't understand him.”