“Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.”

“Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.”

“Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere”

“Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.”

“I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet-tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.”

“I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, "I told you so.”

“In all honesty, men changed a few rules when they became what was referred to as househusbands. Bill didn't make beds, cook, dust, do laundry, windows or floors, or give birth. What he did do was pay bills, call people to fix the plumbing, handle the investments and taxes, volunteer big time, take papers to the garage, change license plates, get the cars serviced, and pick up the cleaning. If women had had that kind of schedule, who knows, we'd probably still be in the home.”