“For a moment, I was captivated as I studied them side by side. My mother: the perfect picture of guardian excellence and decorum. My father: always capable of achieving his goals, no matter how twisted the means. Uneasily, I began to understand how I’d inherited my bizarre personality.”

“I know perfection is one thing I will never achieve, but I will always make it my goal because this means I am always giving my all and working to improve”

“This was always the problem with my mother and me, I suddenly realized. There were so many things we thought we agreed on, but anythign can have two meanings. Like sides of a coin, it just matters how it falls.”

“no matter how hard it was to understand, she would be on my side. Fiercely.Unconditionally.”

“I do not give a rat's front teeth about decorum right now," my father enunciated clearly and loudly. "I have a hole in my side! Have you not noticed?”

“Nora was the only thing that made sense. She was the only unchanging thing in my universe. She was my lodestar. No matter which way my emotions and circumstances and the impulses of my dead, dying, trying body pulled me, no matter how many mistakes I made, she was always true north. Sometimes I’d side with the dead, sometimes with the living, but always with her.”