It's come at last," she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn't enough food in the house you pretended that you weren't hungry so they could have more. In the cold of a winter's night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn't be cold. You'd kill anyone who tried to harm them - I tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you'd give your life to spare them from.

And that's where the whole trouble is. We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand our own selves.

Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be... safe. At least she knows she's living.

I want to live for something. I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food.

Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?

'Dear God,' she prayed, 'let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.'

I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding.