The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

"'Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children.'...it was a fleeting statement, one I didn't think she'd hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit...and it was the first thing she'd said in a very long time that I could take in whole."

“It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.”

“My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want.”

“Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.”

“I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups.”

“…kissing George was a little rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.”

"If anyone had been crying for any reason, he'd pull out a tissue and pat down our cheeks and say salt was for meat, not faces" Rose - on her father