You have to help him see that if he’s disappearing from the world, that’s too high a price to pay for fitting in. He has to see how ‘You shouldn’t push even though you want to’ isn’t the same as ‘You shouldn’t wear a dress even though you want to.

That is the other thing novelist do. We imagine the world we hope for and endeavor, with the greatest power we have, to bring that world into being.

She wasn’t sure that parenting ever qualified as brave. Or maybe it always did. Because it’s not like you got a choice.

That’s what all stories want. They want to get out, get told, get heard. Otherwise, what’s the point of stories? They want to help little boys go to sleep. They want to help stubborn mamas fall in love with dads. They want to teach people things and make them laugh and cry.

It’s a good thing people’s needs don’t all arise at the same time; otherwise we wouldn’t be able to meet them all.

There are few children more treasured than ill-behaved ones who belong to someone else.

A mom at a PTA meeting the year before had taken Rosie aside to advise her not to tack condoms to a bulletin board next to the bed, no matter how convenient a storage solution that seemed, a lesson she confessed, nodding at a first-grader in the corner licking paste off his fingers, she had learned the hard way.

Just because it’s made up, doesn’t mean it isn’t.

Dispelling fear. Taming what was scary not by hiding it, not by blocking it or burying it, not by keeping it secret, but.

For my child, for all our children, I want more options, more paths through the woods, wider ranges of normal, and unconditional love.