“It is only glass, you know. Nothing fine or grand.Your Mother knew it, when she accepted it with my hand.And she knew I danced as well as a tree. She knew about the politics and duties and responsibilities of marrying into royalty. She knew all those...unfortunate things. Things some people might even call ghastly.”

“The stupidest thing she knew was for people to act like they knew all about the things they knew absolutely nothing about.”

“She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.”

“And it was no shame to her that she so dreamed. It was no shame that she called before her, one by one, those who had asked her to cross with them the threshold (of marriage) and those who might still ask her. It was no shame that, while her heart said always, "no," she still waited - waited for one whom she knew not, but only knew that she would know him when he came. And it was no shame to her that, even while this was so, she saw herself in the years to come a wife and mother. ”

“Mama was amazing like that; I spent most of my teenage years assuming that she knew nothing about me, and all of my twenties realizing that she knew everything.”

“...fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like.Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? (140)”