“I’d been raised to be practical and keep myemotions in check, but I loved cars. That was one of the fewlegacies I’d picked up from my mom. She was a mechanic,and some of my best childhood memories were of workingin the garage with her.”

“I’d like to make the argument that The Cars were the first garage band.”

“My mom had a soft heart after all! Instead of being chained by both wrists, we were only chained by one ankle!I mean, if I’d been looking for proof that she really did love me, this was it, right?”

“As these images were going through my head, my breathing suddenly went still. I looked at Jamie, then up to the ceiling and around the room, doing my best to keep my composure, then back to Jamie again. She smiled at me and I smiled at her and all I could do was wonder how I’d ever fallen in love with a girl like Jamie Sullivan.”

“I might have been a fuckup and a failure and a disappointment, but I wasn’t a liar. I did lie to Belly, though. Just that one time in that crappy motel. I did it to protect her. That’s what I kept telling myself. Still, if there was one moment in my life I could redo, one moment out of all the shitty moments, that was the one I’d pick. When I thought back to the look on her face—the way it just crumpled, how she’d sucked in her lips and wrinkled her nose to keep the hurt from showing—it killed me. God, if I could, I’d go back to that moment and say all the right things, I’d tell her I loved her, I’d make it so that she never look that way again.”

“I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.”