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

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

Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment is no more blocking what is instinctive than it is for a man who, muscles or no, chooses not to be a weightlifter.

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.

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

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

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