My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's footsoldiers while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit.

Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

I made it to the childbearing phase without TV dependence, then looked around and thought, Well gee, why start now? Why get a pet python on the day you decide to raise fuzzy little gerbils?

School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind.

Those first few weeks are an unearthly season. From the outside you remain so ordinary, no one can tell from looking that you have experienced an earthquake of the soul. You've been torn asunder, invested with an ancient, incomprehensible magic. It's the one thing that we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.

Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.