“Mama wasn’t Mama anymore, she was Mother, usually followed by a “pallease!”

“Mother! Katie remembered. She had called her own mother "mama" until the day she had told her that she was going to marry Johnny. She had said, "Mother, I'm going to marry..." She had never said "mama" after that. She had finished growing up when she stopped calling her mother “mama.” Now Francie…”

“Mama says the Beardsleys follow her around like dogs, but they don’t. They follow her like tame wolves.I thought Ian said it wasn’t possible to tame wolves.It isn’t.”

“She sicker than my mama was when she die. But she more evil than my mama and that keep her alive.”

“My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’” She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasn’t easy.”

“I spent the whole morning looking at him. He looked at Mama. Mama looked at me. Then he would look at me. I would look at Mama. She would look at him. In different circumstances, I'd be amused.”