“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”

“if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away”

“In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eye...”

“She knew Paul D was adding something to her lifesomething she wanted to count on but was scared to... His waiting eyes and awful human power. The mind of him that knew her own. Her story was bearab...”

“Outside, snow solidified itself into graceful forms. The peace of winter stars seemed permanent.”

“More it hurt more better it is. Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.”

“But you know what they say - old milk turns sour but old scores just get sweeter.”

“But you know what they say - old milk turns sour but old scores just get sweeter.”

“I'll tend to her as no mother ever tended a child, a daughter. Nobody will ever get my milk no more except my own children. I never had to give it to nobody else--and the one time I did it was took...”

“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.”