“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”

“O Jesus, I could be a mule or plow the furrows with my hands if need be or hold those rickety walls up with my back if need be if I knew that somewhere in this world in the pocket of some night I could open my legs to some cowboy lean hips but you are trying to tell me no and O my sweet Jesus what kind of cross is that?”

“And then there's the sickness I feel from looking at legs I can't touch, or at lips that don't smile at me. Or hips that don't reach for me. And hearts that don't beat for me.”

“She cannot chain my soul. Yes, she could hurt me. She'd already done so...I would bleed, or not. Scar, or not. Live, or not. But she could not hurt my soul, not unless I gave it to her.”

“My mother-in-law got so angry at me she vowed she’d never speak to me again, and I smiled and gave thanks for the little miracle God worked in my life.”

“Tell my mother I stopped feeling frightened once I told myself they couldn't inflict half as much pain on me as she suffered when she gave birth to me.”