“My fear is not that I will be a bad mother—on the contrary, I know I will be caring and kind—but that love for my child will be an affliction, a compulsion that subjugates my own desires.”

“Within our first six months of dating, my boyfriend and I almost died together.”

“[Photo]  Some light penetrates the empty inner courtyard. Otherwise the neat grass is dark, and the shadowed lower edge of the flats almost disappears where the brick meets the ground.”

“The room was humid and smelled of lavender cleaner and mold. Ma tried to dress it up for me, but the place was still a dump.”