“She's lovely, great. She was very friendly. She was just like a mum to us.”

“I just look at her and she creeps me out. She looks like she would eat a baby. Not that she's fat. She just looks hungry in some dangerous way that can't be explained. She's always so nice and friendly. Exactly the disposition of a baby killer.”

“She sighs for the thought she has. She would like to be silent, but she must speak.
"We don't love each other any more," she says, embarrassed by the greatness of the things she utters; "but we did once, and I want to see our love again."”

“A woman never tells you why she loves; she just tells you how she loves.”

“Just for the record, she still loves you. She wouldn't bother to torture you if she didn't.”

“She isn't very clever or very devout,… and she certainly empties the whole salt cellar into the stories she tells me. But I love her because she never lies.”

“You had to know someone very well to make them laugh like that. She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did not know him at all?”

“She's ma lady love, she is ma dove, ma baby love,
She's no gal for sittin' down to dream,
She's de only queen Laguna knows;
I know she likes me, I know she likes me
Bekase she says so; She is de Lily of Laguna,
she is ma Lily and ma Rose.”

“Kerrang!: Clare Sharp from Glasgow would like to know what you thought of your mum's appearance in Kerrang! last August [1996] - predicting the future for ten rock stars?
Cornell: Well, if she's gonna predict things, it seems like she would be really good at the stock market or something. But she is my mom, and she's a really good mom - so if she gives advice, it's good advice.”

“She would bring you some great book because she was a book matchmaker, because she loved books the way other girls loved clothes.”