Vanessa Diffenbaugh quotes:

Now, as an adult, my hopes for the future were simple: I wanted to be alone, and to be surrounded by flowers. It seemed, finally, that I might get exactly what I wanted.

Hyacinth. Please forgive me.

Anyone can grow into something beautiful.

Hate can be passionate or disengaged; it can come from dislike but also from fear.

If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously, as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.

I felt my true, unworthy self to be far away from his clutching grasp, hidden from his admiring gaze.

Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.

She was perfect. I knew this the moment she emerged from my body, white and wet and wailing. Beyond the requisite ten fingers and ten toes, the beating heart, the lungs inhaling and exhaling oxygen, my daughter knew how to scream. She knew how to make herself heard. She knew how to reach out and latch on. She knew what she needed to do to survive. I didn't know how it was possible that such perfection could have developed within a body as flawed as my own, but when I looked into her face, I saw that it clearly was.

Your behavior is a choice; it isn't who you are.