“My mother was French Protestant, and my father was Italian Catholic, and their union was an excess of God, guilt and sauce.”

“But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration.”

“My father moved through theys of we,singing each new leaf out of each tree,(and every child was sure that springdanced when she heard my father sing)...”

“The problem is that we don't believe that we are much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholic and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.”

“Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.”

“I made the wrong choice ," I whispered. My mother shook her head."A child should never have to choose.”

“Kids chase the love that eludes them, and for me, that was my father's love. He kept it tucked away, like papers in a briefcase. And I kept trying to get in there.”