“How many times had she seen Annie sew in a sleeve, easing both sides so that they wouldn't pucker, taking a stitch, and smoothing out the fabric again? And now Mama was doing the same thing to someone's head. Someone's skin.”

“What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want--someone to notice she was there.”

“…she would fall in love with me again, just like she had a long time ago. And that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. How many people are ever given that chance? To have someone you love fall in love with you over and over?”

“If I had taken the smooth road already paved by someone else, my career wouldn't have been so challenging and exciting, and because I walked on this untouched path, the joy or victory was also monumental.”

“She didn't know how to love, to give herself to someone, to out herself in someone else's keeping and take him into hers. She didn't trust anyone with her heart - or the darker places of her soul.”

“She had been born for this man, and she had spent so many years trying to accept the fact that he had been born for someone else…”

“Power is not a pre-existing thing which can be handed out to someone, or wrenched from someone. We have seen again and again the failure of "power" conferred. You could give me dozens of cases. The division of power is not the thing to be considered, but the method of organization which will generate power.”

“Mama--Mama--I want so many things… I want so many things that they are driving me kind of crazy…”

“I've lost someone, too; someone I loved. I know how you feel."
- Does it get easier?
"Yes. But you'll never be the same again.”

“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?”