Commonwealth

by Ann Patchett

Half the things in this life I wish I could remember and the other half I wish I could forget.”

She didn’t know how to hate her mother yet, but every time she left her father crying in the airport she came that much closer to figuring it out.

That’s the thing about getting older. Everybody else starts looking younger.”

but sometimes all the right things are as useless as nothing at all.

Life, Teresa knew by now, was a series of losses. It was other things too, better things, but the losses were as solid and dependable as the earth itself.

“For the vast majority of the people on this planet,” Fix had said, “the thing that’s going to kill them is already on the inside.”

“You and your sister. I wanted exactly what I had. Other people’s children are too hard.”