“As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong. She is the beati...”

“Vietnam...war...it did something to us. Or maybe not. Maybe the bad seeds were always in me, and war gave them a dark place in which to grow.”

“A WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE...AND THE SENATE.”

“The measure of a society is its compassion.”

“She remembered how it had felt and tasted, that slowly descending depression, like a thick glass jar that closed around you, sucking away the air you needed to breathe, creating a barrier between y...”

“Caro: "Bite me."Ruby: "I gave that up in kindergarten.”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“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.”