“One of the most important things I've learned is that creating a vision of what you want to be is the beginning of making it happen.”

“Over time, the grueling job of a mother requires one to learn everything from patience to clinical psychology.When you are "in the fire," it is sometimes hard to recognize the value of what you are learning. But the da-to-day refining process--the problem solving, crisis resolution, mental stretching, mess clean-ups, sleep deprivation, and loving more than you thought possible truly makes you into a smart, aware, beautiful refined individual.The great secret is appreciating the refined person you are becoming through your trials.”

“Parenting, when it is pursued seriously and thoughtfully, is not only life's most important career, but its most joyful and fulfilling career.”

“Most risks we might not take if we could see what we would have to go through to reach our goal. Yet, we would never not take most risks if we knew the great learning experience and soul enrichment they would bring.”

“When you get the end of your rope, tie a knot & hold on!”

“I’ve found the things I’ve regretted most in my life are the things I wanted to do but never had the courage to try. And I’m beginning to think I don’t want you to become one of my what-if-I’d-only-tried-it regrets.”

“I've been good at this world, the one that hits you when you are born and makes you cry right from the start, so that crying is your first language. I've learned what I was supposed to learn, bu now it comes to me that in doing so I've unlearned other things. I've lost my sense; I cannot sense things. Yes, we are a shambles. And maybe Ama found the way; she found it when all the paths were washed away by rivers from the sky, when all the buildings were blown down by the breath of a God. For just one day, that one day, she found a way out of that shambles, a way around it. And it's this I want to find. But now she has no path back, no way to return even if she wanted to be here in this America. She will always live away from this world, in something of a twilight that is not one thing or the other, one time or the next. She lives in a point, a small point, between two weighted things and it is always rocking this scale, back and forth.”