“It’s just...” She scrubbed a hand across her face. “I keep looking for someone to share life with, someone patient. Not afraid of a mop or use the stove. Even-tempered, understanding, not allergic to emotion.” She closed her eyes momentarily. “Someone sweet.”Hunter stifled a grimace. She was describing a female with a penis.”

“And now she knew she could never find love in someone else. She knew the lines she treasured so long from the movie were wrong. There was no use searching for love in someone who was born for her. Even if he existed. Love existed in her own self. Inside her. But to comprehend it, to understand it, to awaken it, she needed the other person. Someone who would pull the right strings that made her sing, someone with whom she could share her feelings, her thoughts, her dreams. It was not just someone with whom she could grow old, someone with whom she could share the murmur of the brook.”

“The thing is, I can't love her, not in the real world. Because this would be degrading to me. To love someone who despises you, and she just might. You should see her eyes on me sometimes. Plus she's not even a mother anymore, she's just a planet with a face. Da at least has hands.”

“...I understand Mother's need, whatever she might say on the phone, what she really wants is to hear, before she closes her eyes, the voice of someone who loves her. Love is at last, our only rejoinder to darkness.”

“Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.”

“But most of all, when Somer closes her eyes, she imagines the moment she will hold her baby for the first time. She keeps Asha’s photo in her pocket and looks at it often. That one photo vaporized her doubts and made everything come to life. She lay awake at night, picturing her daughter’s sweet face.”