Brit Bennett

The Mothers: A Novel (Random House Large Print)

Ausrine Blazyte

She wanted this baby and that was the difference: magic you wanted was a miracle, magic you didn't want was a haunting.

Now they were slow and deliberate, the way hurt people loved, stretching carefully just to see how far their damaged muscles could go.

Could you be nostalgic for a friendship that wasn't over yet or did the fact that you were nostalgic mean that it already was?

If a man who knew you could hurt you, who knew what a man who didn't might do?

The pier was nothing but a long piece of wood that kept crumbling until it was rebuilt, and years later, she wondered if that was the point, if sometimes the glory was in rebuilding the broken thing, not the result but the process of trying.

Sometimes she wondered if she only loved him when it was cold, in the middle of winter when everything was dead.

Maybe abortion seemed different when it was just an interesting topic to write a paper about or debate over drinks, when you never imagined it might affect you.

She was a good woman. The more time he spent around her, the more he realized how rarely he thought anybody else was actually good. Nice, maybe, but niceness was something anyone could be, whether they meant it or not. But goodness was another thing altogether.

It's okay to not be a big man. It's enough to be a good one.

Maybe all women were shapeshifters, changing instantly depending on who was around.

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