“Why did I not know that (child) birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers?...Until you are the woman on the bricks, you have no idea how death stands in the corner, ready to play his part. Until you are the woman on the bricks, you do not know the power that rises from other women.”

“Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers?”

“Bed the woman until neither of you can walk, and get her out of your system. Remember, no matter what they are or where they come from, all women have one simple birth defect. BPD.BPD?Bitch Personality Disorder.”

“There was a new simplicity to what I did, a door that had opened before me to worlds I had not imagined. From where I sat, if you watched carefully you could marvel at it, like the impossible birth of a cottonseed or the slow rise of a wooden house: the steady construction of a man, built brick by brick from the shadow of a boy.”

“You are wrong when you say there is no power in being a woman. When I think of my mother and the women in my tribe, and the hidden women in the harem, I know there are many types of power in this world...I found power in accepting the truth of who I am. It may not be a truth that others can accept, but I cannot live any other way. How would it be to live a lie every minute of your life? I don't think I could do it.”

“..you don't always know the true worth of a women's love until it becomes a memory.”