“Prayer sometimes dulls the hunger of the pauper, like a mother's finger thrust into the mouth of her starving baby.”

“A mother is a mother from the moment her baby is first placed in her arms until eternity. It didn't matter if her child were three, thirteen, or thirty.”

“Your mother waits, heart-weary, at the door.
Your child in hunger cries for its chewed rice.
I feed your mother, serving as her son,
and like a father teach your child to read.”

“Sometimes I enter prayer and I intend to prolong it, but then I hear a child crying, and I shorten my prayer thinking of the distress of the child's mother.”

“I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands. In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn. Baby, drink milk. Baby, play ball. And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.”

“A baby was sleeping,
Its mother was weeping,
For her husband was far on the wild-raging sea.”

“It's like I've got a shotgun in my mouth with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gun metal.”

“Willie was sound asleep in her lap, but he sucked her little finger. South of Long Beach we stopped at a drugstore and bought a bottle with a nipple, and a bottle of milk. Willie's eyes opened when she put the nipple to his mouth. He fell to his task like a fiend. Camilla lifted her arms high, ran her fingers through her hair, and yawned with pleasure.”

“Always respect Mother Nature. Especially when she weighs 400 pounds and is guarding her baby.”

“The baby, a girl, is born at 6:24 a. m.
She weighs six pounds, ten ounces.
The mother takes the baby in her arms and asks her, "Who are you, my little one?"
And in response, this baby, who is Liz and not Liz at the same time, laughs.”