“Towards Livia, too, exorbitant was the flattering court of the Senate. Some were for decreeing her the general title of Mother; others the more particular one of Mother Of Her Country; and almost all moved, that to the name of Tiberius should be added, The Son Of Julia: Tiberius urged in answer, that "public honours to women ought to be warily adjudged, and with a sparing hand; and that with the same measure of moderation he would receive such as were presented to himself."”

“A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other.”

“He had the sudden urge to put his arms around her, but the look on her face said that if he made a move toward her, she would move away, and maybe she would keep moving away from him until the distance between them was too great to cross again in one lifetime.”

“If things were different, if there were no revolution, no war, no threads of light, if he were rich, would he go back to London with her and ask for her hand in marriage? He smiled, for the answer was simple. Yes, yes, he would.”

“…But they accuse us of being terrorists. Terrorists, because when the Palestinian mother welcomes her martyred son, she wishes to receive him as a corpse. She does not want him to be alive…. The wish of the Palestinian mother is to see the body of her son the martyr…”

“You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular…. The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.”

“More than mother and son, they were accomplices in solitude.”

“Her mother called to her. She said, "Where are you going, Flora Belle?"
Flora didn't answer her. She never answered her mother when she called her Flora Belle.
Sometimes she didn't answer her mother when she called her Flora either.”

“Beautiful. He'd called her beautiful. Nobody had ever called her that before, except her mother, which didn't count. Mothers were required to think you were beautiful.”

“Fear of this possibility in particular led Tiberius to ask the senate for any part in the administration that it might please them to assign him, saying that no one man could bear the whole burden without a colleague, or even several colleagues.”
Quem maxime casum timens, partes sibi quas senatui liberet, tuendas in re p[ublica]. depoposcit, quando universae sufficere solus nemo posset nisi cum altero vel etiam cum pluribus.