“You can tell which girls lack mothers by the look of their hair...”

“This is the autumn of wonders, yet every day, every single day, I go back to that burned afternoon in August when T. Ray left. I go back to that one moment when I stood in the driveway with small rocks and clumps of dirt around my feet and looked back at the porch. And there they were. All these mothers. I have more mothers than any eight girls off the street. They are the moons shining over me.”

“...impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love.”

“You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside”

“That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love. ~Page 133.”

“I worried so much about how i looked and whether i was doing things right, i felt half the time i was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.- Lily”

“Rebirth is almost impossible without the darkness.....I tell myself I am experiencing the death of myself as mother, the death of myself as a younger woman -- precious old lives going by the wayside. Of course, I should let myself grieve. To deny the grief is to squander a transforming and radiant possibility.”