“I want my life to be mystifying," she declared, although she didn't know what she meant.”

“She didn't want to have anything to do with the party. She was tired of feeling like she didn't fit in, but she didn't want to go home, either, because she was a tired of being lonely and she was a little drunk.”

“She didn't know whether she was running away from something or running to something, but she admitted that deep in her heart she wanted to go home.”

“"You really want to know what else it was my mom said about you?" he asked.
She shook her head.
He didn't seem to notice. "She said you'd break my heart."”

“People usually asked her if she had a belly button. Of course she had a belly button. She couldn't explain how. She didn't really want to know.”

“She didn't want to touch the baby. Didn't want to know if she was dead. But still she reached down, her arms underneath that small body, and pulled it up against her. The body was burning with fever.
But alive. Alive!”

“She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn't know how to handle.”

“This is how she shows herself a woman indeed,
My lady, and I reproach her for it:
She does not want what one ought to want,
And what she is forbidden to do, she does.”

“I want - I want - I want - was all that she could think about - but just what this real want was she did not know.”

“How could she know what she wanted to do with her life? All these years she thought she'd be a healer like Mama, and now she knew it was never going to happen.”