“Everything about my mother was a source of prepubescent agony. On the low end of the Mortification Scale there was her name: Floncey.”

“His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything -- for her brokenness and her fleeing, for her being there right then in that moment before the sun rose and the hospital staff came in. It was about touching that hair with the side of his fingertip, and knowing yet plumbing fearlessly the depths of her ocean eyes.”

“My mother belonged to that group of low IQ individuals who find everything alarming and believe that raising your voice is the most effective form of communication.”

“I am the mother that bore you, and your sorrow is my agony; and if you don't hate her, i do'Then, mother, you make me love her more. She is unjustly treated by you, and I must make the balance even.”

“Mother used to say it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.”

“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”