““It's hard to believe that this is how it's done. That this is how we get here into the world, by accident or design, the microscopic pieces of ourselves borne by fluids and blood and growing into a tiny kingdom of cells inside someone else's body. It seems so difficult to become alive. So improbable. . . How can it be possible? she wonders. How can you come to understand your life when even the beginning is so complicated: a single cell imprinted with the color of your eyes and the shape of your face, the pattern on your palm and the moods that will shadow you through your life. How can you be alive when every choice you make breaks the world into a thousand filaments, each careless step branching into long tributaries of alternate lives, shuddering outward and outward like sheet lightning.””
