[On her father's death:] I didn't know his leaving would hurt so much.

Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.

When children reach the age of sixteen, they discover the meaning of life: car keys.

Never accept a drink from a urologist.

Cats invented self-esteem; there is not an insecure bone in their body.

Grandmas can shed the yoke of responsibility, relax and enjoy their grandchildren in a way that was not possible when they were raising their own children. And they can glow in the realisation that here is their seed of life that will harvest generations to come.

If God had meant us to walk around naked, he would never have invented the wicker chair.