Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me.

I'm not much like my mother; that role falls to my brothers, who have more of her blithe and freewheeling spirit.

A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.

'Hamlet' is a play about a man whose grief is deemed unseemly.

My mother never liked Mother's Day. She thought it was a fake holiday dreamed up by Hallmark to commodify deep sentiments that couldn't be expressed with a card.

After all dying is one of the most profound and difficult experiences we have.

A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That's what makes her a mother.