The notion that the maternal wish and the activity of mothering are instinctive or biologically predestined is baloney.

[On her mastectomy:] Pity is delicious. I was crazy about the pity I got. It was the best kind, too. I did not get, nor did I want, the drooling, mewing kind. I preferred something more restrained but deep-felt. Quality pity.

[On her mastectomy:] Fact is, I'm the same car I always was, except now I have a dent in my fender.

in my mother's ferocious striving to give me 'everything,' she had never considered that giving me 'everything' would make me (1) different (from her), and (2) guilty (about what I got). Different and Guilty are not the stuff on which comradeship is built.

Disease may score a direct hit on only one member of a family, but shrapnel tears the flesh of the others.

The notion that the maternal wish and the activity of mothering are instinctive or biologically predestined is baloney.

unlike a disappointing marriage, disappointing motherhood cannot be terminated by divorce.