“I needed to know that my mother understood that her hand was in this too. That all the jealousy and envy and shame we carried was our own kind of sickness. As much a disease as Toby and Finn’s AIDS.”

“Jealousy we understood and thought natural... But envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.”

“I guess that's when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain't black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it”

“During all the time we were together, I don’t think I ever found out. But once I was with her, Ididn’t need to. We were both music-obsessed, each in our own way. If we didn’t entirely understandthe other person’s obsession, it didn’t matter, because we understood our own.”

“His mother understood my illness immediately, that it was my world rather than myself that was diseased.”

“In the future if my mother tries to shame me with her disapproval, I will let her know in no uncertain terms that I reject her and all of her codependent baggage. I am Codependent No More.”