“... and that was when I learned that work gets done if you simply do it.”

“What young people didnt know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies...”

“This is not the story of my marriage. I cannot tell that story: I cannot take hold of, or lay out for anyone, the many swamps and grasses and pockets of fresh air and dank air that have gone over us.”

“And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, ti...”

“People always kept moving, her mother had said, it's the American way. Moving west, moving south, marrying up, marrying down, getting divorced - but moving...”

“society's been drugging its women for years”

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”

“Healing starts the moment you accept the truth about what has happened. But healing doesnt come quickly. When you know that death or pain has come, you face a moment when you stare that pain in the...”

“A word mother, means a world to me.”

“Maa" The only word that holds power to give you strength when you are in pain.”

“STAINSWith red clay between my toes,and the sun setting over my head,the ghost of my mother blows in,riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord,riding on a honeysuckle breeze.Her teeth, the keys of a ...”

“She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.”

“For we think back through our mothers if we are women.”

“He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst.”