“She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.”

“Death did not come to my mother
Like an old friend.
She was a mother, and she must
Conceive him. Up and down the bed she fought crying
Help me, but death
Was a slow child
Heavy.”

“She is so naked and singular.
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.”

“She was leaving the world as woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad.”

“Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me?”

“It was not often that she was alone like this and she did not like it. When she was alone she had to think and, these days, thoughts were not so pleasant.”

“She [Isa's mother] called up Lufthansa and said, 'I have this daughter, you see, and she needs airplane windows,' she said. That's how she did it.”

“She was my mother and she would not leave me. This I had simply accepted and expected. I had no more thanked her for it than i did the sun for shining on me.”

“I know it wasn't the dinner wine that had me against the wall in a fit of remorse. It was the thought of my mother being so lonesome she had to sit on a street bench, so lonesome she missed the company of a homeless shopping bag woman. Even in the bad days in Limerick she always had an open hand and an open door and why couldn't I be like that to her?”

“And when she dreams, she dreams of a girl who was lost at sea but one day found the shore.”