Nothing was more terrifying than what families could do to each other.

It might still drown you, but love got deeper with time.

For heartsickness of the unending variety, befriend a dove. Do not catch it, not even so that you can set it free. Just get down on the ground with bread crumbs on your chest and wait for it to find you interesting.

How furiously she loved them and how heavy it was to carry that quantity of love, how perilous to care for those delicate bodies in the spinning world.

You can love as many and as much as you want. I thought I had to save my love up, that I would run out. It turns out it’s the exact opposite.

There should be a word for this happiness, she thought. The happiness of nothing extra.

This was a season of worry and joy living side by side in Fern. They did not cancel each other out or blend to create a soft grey. Love could not temper fear and fear could not temper love.

Love’s job is to make a safe place. Not to deny that the spiny forest exists, but to live hidden inside it, tunneled into the soft undergrasses.

Life is effortful,” said Mac. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s good to have work to do.

The children always needed Fern to be a different kind of mother than she had been the week before. They exhausted her and she longed for a break and then she missed them acutely the moment they were out of sight – that was the truth of motherhood.