Parenthood is the only job that gets progressively harder every single year, and you never, ever, ever get a raise.

Franny liked this moment most of all: being alone in the kitchen after almost everything was finished, and listening to the assembled guests chatting happily, knowing they were soon to be fed.

Choices were easy to make until you realized how long life could be.

Going to one school from age five to age eighteen was like being buried in amber. It wasn't even like his walls, which were covered with layers of things - you had to be the same person from start to finish, with no big cognitive jumps.

Why bother getting married, going through all the pomp and pageantry, if you didn't think it was going to last? It was far easier to live in sin and not have to deal with the paperwork.

There was nothing in life harder or more important than agreeing every morning to stay the course, to go back to your forgotten self of so many years ago, and to make the same decision.

Why couldn't everyone stay young forever? If not on the outside, then just on the inside, where no one ever got too old to be optimistic.

It was nice to be in such close physical proximity, even though they hadn't spoken in months, and only via cursory birthday cards and the like. In the end, it didn't matter. Sisters were sisters.

...all she wanted was a button she could push to pause her age, just for a little while, a few years, while she got used to the idea.

Once Charles arrived, Franny would start laughing the way she had when she was twenty-four, and the rest of them could start setting one another on fire for all she cared. That’s what best friends did: ruin people for everyone else.