“Though this child came in with nothing but excess baby fat, chemical brain waves, and mother and son bodily toxins on his legs, he had a fate fit for a modern day demigod.”

“In an angry fit, my mother had called him an airhead, who couldn't find his brain even if it came knocking on his door.”

“At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept. But in England she had to wash piles and piles of nappies, wheel the child round for sunshine during the day, attend to his feeds as regularly as if one were serving a master, talk to the child, even if he was only a day old! Oh, yes, in England, looking after babies was in itself a full-time job.”

“Left with an oncoming headache, went home, and that's verified, to his wife and six-month-old baby. He's three weeks into a big, fat raise and promotion. He doesn't fit for me.""Lucky for Whistler, and likely his mother?""What? Why?""Weak joke. So back to your corporate trio.”

“We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big, sorrowing man's head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child. I never thought at the time how strange it all was.”

“Success will not come to you like a baby who came to his mother”