So I did quit coffee and I did quit smoking. But I haven't managed that with drinking!

I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.

I have never thought I could take it, not even for the children. It is all I have wanted to do, to stand between them and and pain. But I come from a long line of women who put themselves first.

There is something in me maybe someday to be written; now it is folded, and folded, and folded, like a note in school.

She'd crack A joke sharp as a tin lid Hot from the teeth of the can-opener, And cackle her crack-corn laugh.

I think that my work is easy to understand because I am not a thinker, I am not a... How can I put it? I write the way I perceive, I guess.

The older I get, the more I see the power of that young woman, my mother.