“The mother needs mothering too.”

“Mentally tease apart the threads that keep you connected to your mother. See that those threads, those feelings, that you experience with her are what find the two of you -- but they do not have to weave the tapestry of your entire life.”

“Anything she says will be ok with him -- this she feels instinctively. She looks up and meets his eyes: eagle against the sky, his eyes boring into her. He leans over and kisses her, first lightly, then his arms circles her waist and his hand grasps a shoulder blade, pulling her up and closer. Inside her a diamond, the glittering spot where her feelings have solidified into the hardest substance on earth, catches fire and melts.”

“Nature is medicine for the soul, Miss Rolston.”

“It's just human. We all have the jungle inside of us. We all have wants and needs and desires, strange as they may seem. If you stop to think about it, we're all pretty creative, cooking up all these fantasies. it's like a kind of poetry.”

“Because the media always serve up heroes and villians, there had to be the terrible mothers, the anti-Madonnas, the hideous counterexamples good mothers were meant to revile. We regret to report that nearly all of these women were African American and were disproportionately featured as failed mothers in news stories about "crack babies," single, teen mothers, and welfare mothers.”

“There is something about losing your mother that is permanent and inexpressable - a wound that will never quite heal.”