“At four that morning my son, Peter Williams Chambliss, slid into the world tiny and red and roaring with life and the awful love that caught and whirled me away when they laid him on my stomach was as strong and old as the earth and would, I knew dimly, abide as long.”

“Only one thing bothered me: at this very moment, as they say, of inexplicable bliss there would be a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach and my abdomen would be assailed by a melancholy, cold shivering. In the end I couldn't abide such happiness and ran away. ”

“One afternoon, when I was four years old, my father came home, and he found me in the living room in front of a roaring fire, which made him very angry. Because we didn't have a fireplace.”

“In the morning light, I remembered how much I loved the sound of wind through the trees. I laid back and closed my eyes, and I was comforted by the sound of a million tiny leaves dancing on a summer morning.”

“Some feeling had started in my stomach and was traveling up to my face, and I knew that when it got there I would turn bright red and hear the ocean, which is what happens when I get put on the spot. If I don't cry, I turn red and hear the ocean. It's a lose-lose situation.”

“But this morning in meditation, after I heard the lion roar YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW STRONG MY LOVE IS, I came out of that meditation cave like worrior queen.”