Maybe your mind won't remember what I cooked last week, but your body will.

— Erica Bauermeister

She became a frame for the picture that was her son and daughter.

— Erica Bauermeister

She felt about her Lester the way some women do about a pair of spiky red shoes--a frivolous splurge, good only for parties, but oh so lovely.

— Erica Bauermeister

She found herself wondering at what point in her life she had ceased to be Gulliver and had become the strings holding him to the ground.

— Erica Bauermeister

She looked at the produce stalls, a row of jewels in a case, the colors more subtle in the winter, a Pantone display consisting only of greens, without the raspberries and plums of summer, the pumpkins of autumn. But if anything, the lack of variation allowed her mind to slow and settle, to see the small differences between the almost-greens and creamy whites of a cabbage and a cauliflower, to wake up the senses that had grown lazy and satisfied with the abundance of the previous eight months. Winter was a chromatic palate-cleanser, and she had always greeted it with the pleasure of a tart lemon sorbet, served in a chilled silver bowl between courses.

— Erica Bauermeister

She quickly realized she had an affinity for the older books and their muted scents of past dinners and foreign countries, the tea and chocolate stains coloring the phrases. You could never be certain what you would find in a book that has spent time with someone else. As she has rifled through the pages looking for defects, she had discovered an entrance ticket to Given, a receipt for thirteen bottles of champagne, a to-do list that included, along with groceries and dry cleaning, the simple reminder, 'buy a gun.' Bits of life tucked like stowaways in between the chapters. Sometimes she couldn't decide which story she was most drawn to.

— Erica Bauermeister

She simply didn't have an interest in men anymore. It wasn't that she didn't like them, she just knew how easily they broke.

— Erica Bauermeister

Stories of her children when they were small, their round little bodies barely containing their personalities, which bloomed and glittered and melted into her.

— Erica Bauermeister

There were moments in life, Marion thought, when you reached back, baton in hand, feeling the runner behind you. Felt the clasp of their fingers resonating through the wood, the release of your hand, which then flew forward, empty, into the space ahead of you.

— Erica Bauermeister

The women ranged in age, but they were all old enough to know that in the currency of friendship, empathy is more valuable than accuracy.

— Erica Bauermeister