119 Quotes by J. Courtney Sullivan

A kid thinks her mother is just that – hers. A mother is also a woman, an independent being, who doesn’t want to be reminded by anyone, child or otherwise, of her tree-trunk thighs. The world made women’s private lives a public affair to people who knew them and even people who didn’t.

Motherhood was a physical act as much as an emotional one. It took every part of you.

One of life’s contradictions: how human beings were at once entirely resilient and impossibly fragile. One decision could stay with you forever, and yet you could live through almost anything.

That was something no one ever told you. That you would have to get to know your own children.

Beyond those was a stretch of sand and miles of dark blue sea. You couldn’t make out a thing on the other side. As a little girl, Maggie believed that the world dropped off out there, that if you swam far enough you might fall into a starry sky.

April’s just a Dixie cup of crazy. Lydia’s more like a twenty-gallon tank.

Her faith in God was renewed by the simple return of morning, containing the seeds of the day ahead, bringing with it new seeds of redemption, for grace.

He had been smart enough not to have children, so he would never know the peculiar sensation of caring terribly, insanely, for a person over whom you had no control; a person who was your responsibility yet no longer had to answer to you. This.

Your twenties are about getting the things you want – the career, the man. Your thirties are about figuring out what to do with that stuff once you’ve got it.