“Women hand sight down through the generations. Mother to daughter.”

“I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters.”

“It involves no disrespect for Mrs. Truman to say that her daughter gets a bigger hand than she does,' observed Richard Rovere. 'This country may be run by and for mothers, but its goddesses are daughters. Margaret's entrance comes closer than anything else to bringing down the house.”

“Every Mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother and every mother extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter.”

“The daughter wants to turn the past on its back like a turtle or a roach, leaving those legs walking futilely through air cheering on those starved and paralyzed years. The mother put her makeup on, got ready for work, while cigarettes burned down, one by one in the chipped, red ashtray. The daughter stood beside the blaring alarm clock and shook the mother's sleeping body who worked sixteen hours a day and called the daughter and son from pay phones between jobs. When the mother found the daughter on the lawn of the mental hospital playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on her harmonica the mother couldn't believe it, because she was gone the years that led to it. When they finally came together, they came together as guilty mother and guilty daughter and found there was nothing there to trade.”

“The Earth swirls down through the ominous moons of preconsidered generations.”