Then the space between us got bigger. The first time I noticed he’d been detaching, I saw an opened tube of toothpaste in the first floor bathroom.

"Pearl had grown up knowing and not knowing her mother. It happened sometimes: a child raised by an aunt, by grandparents. The mother hovering at the borders of their lives."

"Friendship affords certitude above all, and that is what distinguishes it from love."

"She needs to know what it's like to drown on solid ground."

"People will call her what they will, but none of the names we have for her can describe how happy I imagine her to be."

“All I can think is that everywhere March must be different. The fat man, bearded, in thong sandals, tells me dryer #1 is broken, holds up to me his limp sweatpants—It didn’t dry a thing, he says.”