Many women get involved with a man that you pretty much know isn't suitable and you're kind of breaking your rules, but he's attractive in some unknown way. And then he doesn't even realize what a sacrifice you're making by being with him and he dumps you!

She was a beautiful woman dragging a crippled foot and I was that foot. I was bricks sewn into the hem of her clothes, I was a steel dress

Panic was the worst thing. When you panicked, you couldn't see possibilities. Then came despair.

I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple.

This was the life I was going to be living, everybody separated from everybody else, hanging on for a moment only to be washed away.

She laughed so easily when she was happy. But also when she was sad.

You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you