“In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.”

“My mother and Joe have a lovers' shorthand, an economy of gestures that comes when you are close enough to someone to speak their language. I wonder if my mother and father ever had that, or if my mother was always just trying to decipher him.”

“What could you give me," I ask, my voice shaking, "to make me forget ... that you forgot about me?”

“But I think half the battle is figuring out what works for you, and I am much better at being a mother than I ever would have been as a lawyer. I sometimes wonder if it is just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they are supposed to be by going nowhere." - My Sister's Keeper”

“My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together?Bread, of course.”

“Who I am, and what I am capable of doing has always managed to surprise me.”

“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.”