A father is the template of a man that nature gives a girl.
One of the best things about having children is that it enables you to have the same loving memories as another person – you can summon the same past. Two flashbacks but with a single image.
My mother thinks some disaster has happened if I don’t return a phone call from her within twenty-four hours. It’s hard to explain that the only chance to return the call will be when a disaster ISN’T happening, stormy being the prevailing climate with surprise outbreaks of calm.
When he laughed, Roy’s mouth revealed a Stonehenge of ancient teeth.
She laughed now, and the sound of it – clear as a bell, dirty as a rugby match – turned heads all along their row.
Anyone suffering Downton Abbey withdrawal symptoms will find an instant tonic.
In death, we are not defined by what we did or who we were but by what we meant to others. How well we loved and were loved in return.
When you have kids, there’s a tendency to put the marriage stew on the back burner and give it a quick stir now and then. But it’s important to remember why you had children with this person.
You learned that if you’re tired enough, you can sleep sitting up. That the unendurable is perfectly endurable if you just take it a minute at a time, and when the alternative is no more minutes ever...
The best musicians answer something in you when you don’t even know the question.
Death itself is too big to take in, she already sees that; the loss comes at you instead in an infinite number of small installments that can never be paid off.
A mother of a one-year-old boy is a movie star in a world without critics.
God probably thinks it’s worth giving a sense of humor only to those of us who have to laugh at all the rubbish bits that are wrong with us.