"Mother, you can still hold hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live, I forgive you, Mother."

"Science doesn't tell us what we should do. It only tells us what is."

"Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier."

"Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet."

"Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning."

"This will be Great Mam's last spring. Her last June apples. Her last fresh roasting ears from the garden."

"Love changes everything. I never suspected it would be so. Requited love, I should say ..."

"The flowers were beaten down, their bent-over heads bejeweled with diamond droplets like earring on sad, rich widows."

"But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run."

"Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they're no good."

"God doesn't need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves."

"Parenting is something that happens mostly while you're thinking of something else."

"Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel."

"It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer."

"Your own family resemblances are a frustrating code, most easily read by those who know you least."

"You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own."

"Eating is a genuine need, continuous from our first day to our last, amounting over time to our most significant statement of what we are made of and what we have chosen to make of our connection to home ground."

"Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up."