“Madlen came to sit beside her on the bed. "Lady Queen," she said with her own particular brand of rough gentleness. "It is not the job of the child to protect her mother. It's the mother's job to protect the child. By allowing your mother to protect you, you gave her a gift. Do you understand me?”

“She looked like a mother protecting her child of course, we're talking a half-crazed, bloodthirsty mother.”

“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.”

“I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my mother's mother. Your father's mother's mother's mother. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.What kind of letter? my grandmother asked.I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.You want a letter from me? she asked.I told her yes.Oh, God bless you, she said.The letter she gave me was sixty-seven pages long. It was the story of her life. She made my request into her own. Listen to me.”

“If a mother can kill her own child - what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me - there is nothing between.”

“Does not a child recognize her own mother?”