“Taking us by and large, we're a queer lotWe women who write poetry. And when you thinkHow few of us there've been, it's queerer still.I wonder what it is that makes us do it,Singles us out to scribble down, man-wise,The fragments of ourselves. Why are weAlready mother-creatures, double-bearing,With matrices in body and in brain?I rather think that there is just the reasonWe are so sparse a kind of human being;The strength of forty thousand AtlasesIs needed for our every-day concerns.There's Sapho, now I wonder what was Sapho.I know a single slender thing about her:That, loving, she was like a burning birch-treeAll tall and glittering fire, and that she wroteLike the same fire caught up to Heaven and held there,A frozen blaze before it broke and fell.Ah, me! I wish I could have talked to Sapho,Surprised her reticences by flinging mineInto the wind. This tossing off of garmentsWhich cloud the soul is none too easy doingWith us to-day. But still I think with SaphoOne might accomplish it, were she in the moodto bare her loveliness of words and tellThe reasons, as she possibly conceived themof why they are so lovely. Just to knowHow she came at them, just watchThe crisp sea sunshine playing on her hair,And listen, thinking all the while 'twas sheWho spoke and that we two were sistersOf a strange, isolated little family.And she is Sapho -- Sapho -- not Miss or Mrs.,A leaping fire we call so for convenience....”

“She put a hand on his hip and turned him to her. "But things could go wrong, so i want to tell you something while it's just the two of us, Eddie. I want to tell you how much I love you." She spoke simply, with no drama.I know you do," he said, "but I'll be damned if I know why."Because you made me feel whole," she said. "When I was younger, I used to vacillate between thinking love was this great and glorious mystery and thinking it was just something a bunch of Hollywood move producers made up to sell more tickets in the Depression, when Dish Night kind of played out."Eddie laughed. Now I think that all of us are born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You...Eddie, you fill me up.”

“Ten Commandments:I asked her why she never told us about the Ten Commandments & she said she wasn't ever that good with numbers so she loved everything as best she could & I remember thinking who needs all those rules anyway with a mother like her around.”

“But even though she was wise beyond her years, she was still young, and so was I, and all of our words were drowned out by the noise of our beating hearts, screaming at us that we were, after all, creatures of flesh and blood.”

“She likes us,” said Umbo. “I know, I could feel it too,” said Rigg. “She’s really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children.” “Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew.” “They were delicious.”

“This was our house. Mine and hers. I know she’d sneak over to the rectory every once in a while and let you wail on her for a night. But I got her the rest of the time. I cooked her breakfast. I answered her fan mail. I put her to bed when she fell asleep at her desk writing. I rubbed her back when she was sore from overworking herself. And when she got all wrought up over you, it was me she cried on. No, she and I never had sex. That’s true. But we had love, real love that didn’t take anything out of us, that didn’t bruise us or break us. I loved her without hurting her. You asked me if I, a virgin, could teach her what sex should be? No, course not. Hell no. But at least I can teach her what love should be like. And she knows it too.”