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

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.

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.

... to be afraid is in a way to be hopeful, because to be afraid means that you haven't given up. You know it doesn't help, but you keep thrashing. The monster has you pinned to the wall, but you're not ready to say, 'Oh, hell, eat me.

[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.