“No matter how old you are, theres no cozier feeling than to have your mom take care of you.”

“I'm supposed to eat shit with a fork and a knife and say thank you when I'm done swallowing this crap?”

“Its actually quite the contrary. Its time to freak the fuck out, and thats not just acceptable, its obligatory. The rug has just been pulled out from beneath your feet, and everything you thought y...”

“Sure, occasionally a certain sappy song or romantic movie would come on, and youd wonder what he or she was up to, but there was no way to know. Of course, you could always pick up the phone (and m...”

“I had stopped doing anything for myself. I no longer felt like an individual because for thirteen years, I was one-half of a we.”

“And finally, always remember that the other person started it.”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother...”

“We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...”

“Id never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons.”