“I wonder how many ways there are for a mother to produce that wreckage in her own daughter, and my muscles tense as I think of them.”

“Once, I was my mother's daughter. Now I am my daughter's mother.”

“Every Mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother and every mother extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter.”

“I don't care who gets in my way--my mother, my grandmother, my daughter: I'll knock each and every one of them on their ass.”

“When things get unbearable, I wrap myself into a tight ball and shut my eyes. Every muscle in my body is tense. I open my eyes and I'm still where I was when I closed them to escape. Nothing's changed.”

“The girls always think we're going to throw them over a table or toss them in the air. Their muscles tense up right away. So Fred and I go and sit in a corner and pretend we're talking business.”

“My own mother is always telling us how well behaved our children are, but little does she know how we got them that way! She would turn grey if she knew, I cane her perfect grandson, but she loves the result.”

“I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from her entirely. No matter how strong or weak I was, she was a part of me, as crucial as my own heart. I would never be strong enough, in all my life, to do without her.”

“I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened.”

“Think about it, I say. How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not.”