“To my horror I began to cry…a great cloud of black guilt, knowledge of my atrocious selfishness, settled on me. One day she had said “when you love me (and she had not meant ‘make love to me’) it’s as if God forgave me for being the mess I am”; and I took it as chicanery, another emotional blackmail, to make me feel essential and give me a sense of responsibility towards her…My monstrous crime was Adam’s, the oldest and most vicious of all – male selfishness…Something far worse than lèse majesté. Lèse-humanité.”

“Looking out on the morning rain,
I used to feel so uninspired.
And when I knew I had to face another day,
Lord, it made me feel so tired.
Before the day I met you, life was so unkind.
Your love was the key to my peace of mind.'Cause you make me feel.
You make me feel,
You make me feel like
A natural woman”

“It's not the leaving of all I love that makes me cry
But my darling, when I think of you.”

“I laid it all out for him: Eliza believes in me, she moves me, and she's moved BY me. She makes me happy, she makes me sad, she makes me try harder, she makes me laugh, and she makes me feel like I can fly. Isn't that the goddamn definition of Love?”

“She loved me coming and going, at my worst and at my best. She had a bottomless well of love for me.”

“My grandmother—God bless her soul—a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico, was the greatest teacher I’d ever had! And do you know what she taught me, she taught me that each and every day is un milagro given to us by God, and that work, that planting corn and squash with our two hands is holy. She taught me all this with kindness and invitation. Not with ridicule and looking down her nose at me and making me feel like less than human when I didn’t get it at first.”

“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 love my mom. And this time, I told her I loved her. And she told me she loved me, too. And things were okay for a little while.”

“Sam dropped me off. When she was too far away to see me, I started to cry again. Because she was my friend again. And that was enough for me.”

“I love her because she has become something more to me. She become my life.”