My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.

You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.

Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

She [my mother] said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didn't listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.