What will life be like without her? I am dreadfully sad she is leaving. What if she just disappears; gets tired of all this trouble at home? What if she leaves me too? How heavy is a dresser when you’re the only one pushing it against the door? I feel truly on my own.

The sky is like an invisible map of songs.

Memory, if it is anything at all, is unreliable.

It’s important to remember that even the biggest person was, at one time, very, very small.

The world was waking up.

We humans are different – our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them, our recollections in their retelling.

Candid and searing, Deborah Jiang Stein’s memoir is a remarkable story about identity, lost and found, and about the author’s journey to reclaim – and celebrate – that most primal of relationships, the one between mother and child. I dare you to read this book without crying.

We children of schizophrenics are the great secret keepers, the ones who don’t want you to think that anything is wrong.

Who am I, then, if my memory is impaired?

Cheryl Strayed reminds us, in her lyrical and courageous memoir Wild, of what it means to be fully alive, even in the face of catastrophe, physical and psychic hardship, and loss.