“Started as a flicker, meant to be a flame. Skin has gotten thicker, but it burns the same. Still a baby in a cradle, got to take my first fall...baby's getting next to nowhere with her back against the wall.”

“You lay your hand against his skin and just rib his back. Blow into his ear. Press that baby up against your own skin and walk outside with him, where the night air will sourround him, and moonlight fall on his face. Whistle, maybe. Dance. Hum. Pray.(how to calm a crying baby)”

“I sit down on the bed, cradling her little head against my shoulder, inhaling her sweet baby scent. Someday she'll get older, and the world will start having its way with her. She'll throw temper tantrums, she'll need speech therapy, she'll grow breasts and have pimples, she'll fight with her parents, she'll worry about her weight, she'll put out, she'll have her heart broken, she'll be happy, she'll be lonely, she'll be complicated, she'll be confused, she'll be depressed, she'll fall in love and get married, and she'll have a baby of her own. But right now she is pure and undiminished and beautiful.”

“In the middle of a wrist's suicide slash-line, below the layered skin and above the pulse, there's an acupuncture point that says, Get back to who you were meant to be. This is the heart spot, the center. Your whole life the skin on that place will stay closest to being a baby's skin, as close as you can get anymore to the way you started, the way you once thought you'd always be.”

“The baby, a girl, is born at 6:24 a.m.She weighs six pounds, ten ounces.The mother takes the baby in her arms and asks her, "Who are you, my little one?"And in response, this baby, who is Liz and not Liz at the same time, laughs.”

“Never take the first brick out of the wall unless you know it is meant to fall”