Handle With Care Quotes
"Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus." - WALLACE STEGNER, THE SPECTATOR BIRD
"You can't be in labor, the C-section's scheduled for Monday."
"Just because you had every right to feel sorry for yourself didn’t mean you ever took the opportunity to do so."
"Privacy’s a fundamental right, and the privacy of my family was violated beyond belief."
"If the mother had known during her pregnancy that her child was going to be significantly impaired, she would have chosen to abort the fetus."
"What if you read that first chapter and realized you hated the book, and posted a nasty review on Amazon? What if you hurt the author’s feelings? Better just to stick with your partial copy and enjoy the rest of the story."
"Being adopted felt like reading a book that had the first chapter ripped out. You might be enjoying the plot and the characters, but you’d probably also like to read that first line, too."
"The thing is, where Piper can carry off that brashness and confidence, on Charlotte, it seems a little off—like a kid playing dress-up in her mom’s closet."
"You hand off a serving dish and you’ve done your job—no need to get personally involved, and your conscience is clean. Food is the currency of aid."
"I tried to turn my attention to a lawsuit with the thinly veiled message that there are some children who should never be born."
"I liked to think of my role, instead, as the fairy-tale version. That one day, I’d make you feel like a princess."
"'The day you bring her a speculum,' Charlotte used to say, 'your welcome is officially rescinded.'"
"You laughed, and began to smack the plastic surface, too. The sound brought Charlotte into the room."
"The world was utterly black-and-white for Sean, and I guess I’ve always been the kind of person who prefers a splash of color."
"'Would you do this?' I whispered out loud. 'Would you do this, if you were me?'"
"Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child."
"How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams."
"You win. We really don’t need to X-ray the lower arm."
"I am amazed to report, Willow, that you’ve broken one of the bones that’s hardest to break in the human body—your shoulder blade."
"Scapula, sternum, and xiphoid. I can spell them, too."
"You’re so busy living in the past, you’ve got nothing to give right now."
"Would you ruin your best friend’s reputation as a doctor just to get a settlement?"
"As physicians, we’re taught to look for things that are abnormal—not things that are too perfect."
"The closer it got to the ceiling, the more I was riveted."
"But it’s a catch-22: all of those things you’re willing to lose are what make you recognizable."
"When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh and honest."
"What you didn’t tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did."
"The only problem with being invisible in school was that, when I came home, I could still see myself."
"Sometimes you and Amelia played board games, and when you rolled the dice, they got stuck in a crease of the couch or rolled onto the floor. Do-over, you’d say, and it was that easy to get a second chance."
"I’ve never cheated on Charlotte. I’ve never even thought about cheating on Charlotte."
"I was already moving as you turned to face me."
"I wonder if there’s a difference between being a dutiful mother and being a good mother."
"Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don’t want their kids...but when you look more closely, you realize that they’re doing those kids a favor."
"I felt like I was violating something private."
"I’ve missed Emma. I’ve missed watching her grow."
"It looks good on the surface, and you can tell yourself that you know her favorite color... But that’s not what makes her who she is."
"I let myself be led to the couch in the living room and looked around at the machine-made Oriental rug, the dusty face of the television, the battered cardboard boxes of games stacked high on the fireplace hearth."
"I realized something remarkable: I liked you. I liked you a lot."
"I could see who you would become when you grew up. That stubborn resolve, the quiet acceptance of someone resigned to fighting an uphill battle."
"Being here, in my own bed, with my own wife, felt inevitable and uncomfortable at the same time."
"There was a guy in the department whose wife had had breast cancer a few years ago. And then his wife recovered, and everyone celebrated, and a week later, she told him she wanted a divorce."
"Why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet."
"Even when I felt sure of myself and confident, I still loved him."
"Baking until the windows steamed and just breathing felt like sitting down at the finest table."
"Something separate and apart, an identity as bright and clear as stainless steel."
"An ingredient more concentrated than any extract, more pungent than any spice; it was regret."
"It's not my disability that makes my life a constant struggle, it's people like you."
"I love you, and I always will. Maybe more than I should."
"When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance."
"But instead, the opposite happened. Not only were you back but so were Mom and Dad—and they weren’t just putting on a good show for you, they were really together."
"I didn’t really believe in God, but I wasn’t above hedging my bets, so I had prayed a silent bargain: if we can be a family again, I won’t complain."
"I thought that, on the day of the trial, I’d wake up with butterflies in my stomach or a raging headache, but as my eyes slowly adjusted to the sunlight, all I could think was It’s going to be okay."
"Didn’t everyone lie? And wasn’t there a difference between...killing a person and telling the police you hadn’t and smiling down at a particularly ugly baby and telling her mother how cute she was?"
"How could you forget that this particular "friend" had seen you naked? Had carried your dreams when you were too tired to?"
"The difference is that hers break more rapidly, and more easily. Because of this, from her birth, osteogenesis imperfecta has meant a lifetime of setbacks, rehabilitation, therapy, and surgeries for Willow, a lifetime of pain."
"I wonder if I looked different, too—or if that was even possible, given that, the very moment I’d sued her, I’d become someone she never thought I could be."
"Charlotte O’Keefe, who was on the witness stand now, was not even really capable of bearing witness to her own life, in spite of the fact that she’d lived it."
"The silence was a blanket so huge, it seemed to cover the entire table."
"What I really wanted was for all of us to go back two years, and start over."
"You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself."
"If you were upset, why didn’t you come to us?"
"I can’t figure out why a kid who’s got two parents that love her, and a roof over her head, and a pretty damn good life would hate herself enough to do any of that."
"I love you so much that I don’t know who I’d be without you."
"It was my job, then, to break the ice, wasn’t it?"
"She’ll still have breaks, and surgeries to repair them."
"I’ve treated her since she was six months old. She’s a great kid."
"What were you thinking, Amelia? If you were upset, why didn’t you come to us?"
"As much as it pained me to admit it, Lou St. Pierre was right. People were always saying they’d love any baby that came along, but that wasn’t necessarily true."
"Parents aren’t the people you come from. They’re the people you want to be, when you grow up."
"Not everything has to have a point. Live a little."
"Sometimes, it really did come down to the particular child in question."
"You may be angry at us, but that’s not really why you told Guy Booker you’d testify."
"There’s this weird part about having kids—you know when your family is finished, and when it’s not."
"If you find in favor of the plaintiff, you’re buying into her faulty logic: that you can love your child so much you’d sue a doctor—a close friend—because you believe she should never have been born."
"When you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more."
"The truth was, I was greedy. I needed to understand why my birth mother hadn’t, and until I did, there would always be a part of me that felt like a failure."
"All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else’s life would not have been as rich without us here."