She had her addictions and one of them was reading.

Whoever coined the phrase 'a man's got to play the hand that was dealt him' was most certainly one piss-poor bluffer.

No one expected you to amount to much," she told me. "Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard.

Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting. Isn't that a sin?" I asked Mom. Not exactly," Mom said. "God doesn't mind you bending the rules a little if you have a good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.

You can't prepare for everything life's going to throw at you. And you can't avoid danger. It's there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit around wringing your hands about it, you'll out on all the adventure.

Life there was hard and it made people hard.

Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?