“A dutiful mother is someone who follows every step her child makes...And a good mother is someone whose child wants to follow her.”

“I wonder if there's a difference between being a dutiful mother and being a good mother.'There is,' I said, and Charlotte looked up at me, expectant. Even if I couldn't articulate the difference as an adult, as a child I had felt it. I thought for a moment. 'A dutiful mother is someone who follows every step her child makes,' I said. And a good mother?'I lifted my gaze to Charlotte's. 'Is someone whose child wants to follow her.”

“Maybe this was the job of a mother: to buy time for her child, no matter what. Even if it meant doing something she'd rather not; even if it left her flat on her back.”

“Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child.”

“Following my mother's footsteps was the surest way out.”

“I think about following her, but I want to give Zoe a minute alone with her mother. I want them to have the shift and redistribution of their relationship that I never got to have with my own mom, that acrobatic feat of love where everything is turned upside down and yet they are both still able to keep their balance.”

“Real mothers don't just listen with humble embarrassment to the elderly lady who offers unsolicited advice in the checkout line when a child is throwing a tantrum. We take the child, dump him in the lady's cart, and say, "Great. Maybe you can do a better job."Real mothers know that it's okay to eat cold pizza for breakfast.Real mothers admit it is easier to fail at this job than to succeed.”