“Called her a whore and attacked her walls, tearing down her posters and throwing her books everywhere. I found out because some whitegirl ran up and said, Excuse me, but your stupid roommate is going insane, and I had to bolt upstairs and put him in a headlock.”

“I would move the earth to save your mother. D'ye hear me, Sarah? I would tear down the walls of her jail and carry her to the wilds of Maine, but it is not what she wants. She will throw herself at her judges because she believes that her innocence will show through all the lies and deceptions...She humbles me with her strength.”

“Death is like an old whore in a bar--I'll buy her a drink but I won't go upstairs with her”

“And some small gnarled place inside me hated her for her weakness, for her neglect, for the months she had put us through. I had taken a step back from my mother, put up a wall to protect myself from needing her, and nothing was ever the same between us again.”

“Her last call, at midnight, had been the worst. "I'll pull your cock out of your asshole," she'd said, and for some reason her voice at that moment had reminded him of his mother's.”

“I watched the tears run down her cheeks and start to drip from the end of her chin. One part of me wanted to put my arms round her but I daren't. Do that and I'd never be able to let her go.”