22 Quotes by Jennifer Vandever

They smiled awkwardly and hugged again. Rosalind thought briefly to ask when they'd stopped being necessary to each other, when she had become another obligation to fill like their parents or Polly.

That's just how it is. You get halfway through your life and realize you've done it all wrong. You've picked the wrong jobs and followed the wrong dreams. Every decision from your cradle to the counter of an upscale children's boutique in Portland, Oregon gratingly names little fig where you now stand tethered at the age of thirty-seven for thirteen-dollars-an-hour-plus-commission has been all wrong.

How had it escaped her, Rosalind wondered. How had she never appreciated that her mother was a human being with her own desires and disappointments?

Someone has broken your heart. I knew there was something about you. That's it, isn't it?'A little," Sara said, suddenly self-conscious.I'm sorry.'It happens." She shrugged, straining for nonchalance.Maybe,' he said. 'But if it's your destiny, what can you do but accept it.

you really got to do it--it's like you don't know what love is until you have a kid.

Remember the good times---you'll need them during the bad," a family friend had boozily warned her at their wedding.

Richard and I always called you the punisher. We never had to discipline you. Not like we did Hermione or Polly. Because you were so hard on yourself. If there’s anything I want for you now, as a mother, even if I don’t ‘deserve’ it is: I want you to be gentle. I want you to have compassion. For yourself and everyone. It’s what every parent wants. If their any good. Which maybe I wasn’t...

How could she love someone she barely knew? A year ago she would have said it was impossible: love was a choice people made daily and longevity was its measure. Love did not crash land in your living room leaving you squinting into daylight, picking through the debris of your former life. Only now could she see that it was sometimes a phantom thing, a stray that wandered the periphery of your life and moved in the minute you opened the door for who knew how long?

They didn’t talk the way new lovers often do, sharing everything; they were selective and wary. Sometime it seemed to her their relationship was mostly physical, something she enjoyed.