A sister is both your mirror - and your opposite.

Every articulate family ... generates its own stories, explanations and myths to illuminate the differences in temperament and talent among its children, the lines of allegiance and influence between parent and child.

From the psychological jousting between sisters in the early family arena emerge the first tentative boundaries of their personalities.

Both within the family and without, our sisters hold up our mirrors: our images of who we are and of who we can dare to become.

Comparison is a death knell to sibling harmony.

The desire to be and have a sister is a primitive and profound one that may have everything or nothing to do with the family a woman is born to. It is a desire to know and be known by someone who shares blood and body, history and dreams.

What surprised me was that within a family, the voices of sisters as they're talking are virtually always the same.