“Mothers were the only ones you could depend on to tell the whole, unvarnished truth.”

“You are right to be afraid," he said, "but where does this fear lead you? Nowhere. You must let go of fear.”

“In some instances, it may unfortunately be necessary for a Wife to seek outside employment, such as when the husband is dismembered or is dead.”

“Yeah, you are kind of a dumbass.”

“Truth wasn't something you went out and found. It was wide and vast and deep and unending, and all you could hope to see was a tiny part of it. And to see that part and to mistake it for the whole was to make of Truth a lie.”

“These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.”

“I remember saying to my mother, ‘Why do you have so many children? Is it hard to have children?’ And she said, ‘Oh, no. It’s as easy as falling off a log.’You see that was the only pleasure poor people could afford. It cost nothing – at least at the time when you were actually making the children. The fact that it would cost you something later on, well, the working-class people never looked ahead in those days. They didn’t dare. It was enough to live for the present.”