“I became obsessed with the one question-when was it, when were we, irrevocable? When did all the little tumblers fall into place and our fate was locked in and it became impossible for us to be anything other than what we became? When was the guilty moment?”

“What did she care what became of this world when her loved ones were dead and gone?”

“I had no more value after I became an author than when I was in my home tending to runny noses, little bumps and bruises. . . Our value can't be wrapped inside what others think or we think, because that is too dependent on this ever-shifting world. The value God places on us makes us more than we think we are, even on our hardest days, weeks, or years.”

“We weren’t ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves – surprise! – we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way.”

“When we became teenagers boredom grew like a moth in a cocoon fighting to escape, and the peace created by our parents became a prison. We sought excitement and adventure. We sought anything but the sinless, pure, and average of the faux idyllic.”

“And just like that, I became my mother. We all do, if only for a moment at a time. That person we never think we will be like when we grow up is the person we see in our own reflection. How did that happen so fast?”