Quotes from Julie Cohen

Stargazing is the story of a happy family plunged into an unexpected drama: it's poignant, warm, and unpredictable. I enjoyed it hugely.' -- Julie Cohen

But this is useless speculation, anyway: we can't decide that one thing happening control everything else in out life. Every choice is the result of other choices, which are a result of choices before that. We can't control what bodies we're born with or how people treat us because of them. Maybe the world is similarly out of our control. Small forces, large ones, one choice leading to another, a machine of causation beyond understand.

Coffee. The implications of that were pretty clear: she didn't want to commit long enough for dinner with him, nor did she want to trust the disinhibiting effect of an after-work drink.

not only on everyday

Maybe this is what men are like, or maybe this is how the two of them have chosen to be. Maybe they can choose to be different.

He doesn't believe in what is meant to be. He only believes in what is. We can know a river, but we can't know all the drops in it, every journey they could have taken instead of this one.

But when Lou is born, their biological sex is the first thing that anyone sees... The beginning of every choice made about this person, even before they have the power to make choices for themselves. At this moment of birth... Lou Alder is the nexus of all their parents' dreams. But those dreams are different for son and for daughter.

She runs her hands over her hipbones and her ribs, stark even under her nightgown, and she thinks about how crazy she was not to appreciate it. How stupid she was all her life not to eat the French Fries and vanilla Cokes. As if her slimness and beauty were the most valuable things she could ever own.

all we have is people, people with their messy indefinites, their changes and inconsistencies, their desires and fears, their acts that echo down the years and change the world.

This time she knew what it was like to hold someone for years in your memory instead of in your arms. She knew how features blurred, voices faded, touches dissolved. So she looked at Robbie and tried to imprint him on her memory, to be able to take him out when she was alone and felt strong enough. When she was safe, and able to think about this moment when she had been perfectly loved and perfectly alone.

She touched the words with the tip of her finger and smudged the pencil and then saw how the smudge stayed on her finger. Words from his hand transferred to her skin.

I … there is a great discrepancy between