Victoria

“God gives us only one life. But with good books, we can live a hundred, even a thousand lives in the time we are allotted on this earth.”
― Sherry Thomas, A Conspiracy in Belgravia

“How do we forgive ourselves for all of the things we did not become?”
― Doc Luben, Love Letters or Suicide Notes

“She was trying hard not to romanticize her daughter’s personality. She didn’t want to ascribe characteristics to her that were not truly hers. A good game designer knows that clinging to a few early ideas about a project can cut off the potential for the work. Sadie did not feel that Naomi was altogether a person yet, which was another thing that one could not admit. So many of the mothers she knew said that their children were exactly themselves from the moment they appeared in the world. But Sadie disagreed. What person was a person without language? Tastes? Preferences? Experiences? And on the other side of childhood, what grown-up wanted to believe that they had emerged from their parents fully formed? Sadie knew that she herself had not become a person until recently. It was unreasonable to expect a child to emerge whole cloth. Naomi was a pencil-sketch of a person who, at some point, would be a fully 3D character.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

“But what-if is different once you have kids, because all of a sudden, everything leading up to their births, those choices, those realities are set in stone. Because if things had been even a little different, they might not exist, and that is the one possibility you cannot bear.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Brothers Hawthorne