Memory feeds imagination.

You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity.

From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don't have to be stupid to marry the wrong man.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.

Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.

My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughind and wiping the tears from each others eyes. The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my family hands me the snapshot. My sisters and I watch quietly together, eager to see what develops. Ghe grey-greensurface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don't speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in suprise to see, her long-cherished wish.

Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.