I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

We will have to give up the hope that, if we try hard, we somehow will always do right by our children. The connection is imperfect. We will sometimes do wrong.

Our daily existence requires both closeness and distance, the wholeness of self, the wholeness of intimacy.

There is a time to separate from our mother. But unless we are ready to separate-unless we are ready to leave her and be left-anything is better than separation.

Our father presents an optional set of rhythms and responses for us to connect to. As a second home base, he makes it safer to roam. With him as an ally--a love--it is safer, too, to show that we're mad when we're mad at our mother. We can hate and not be abandoned, hate and still love.

[On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty pissed off.

We cannot love others as others unless we possess suficient self-love, a love we learn from being loved in infancy.