...I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven't forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn't have the opportunity to pursue her dreams, and all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn't do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom's dreams?

If you only do what you like, who's going to do what you don't like?

How can you live without trusting people? There are more people who are good than people who are bad!

Life is sometimes amazingly fragile, but some lives are frighteningly strong.

Either a mother and daughter know each other very well or they are strangers.

I had no way of knowing where it began or where it ended. Only that it flowed without restraint.

You realize that you habitually thought of Mom when something in your life was not going well, because when you thought of her it was as though something got back on track, and you felt re-energized.