No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they're pretty, even if they aren't.
— Really?
— Yeah. Well, we're all somebody's children.
One time, when he was a child, in a power-failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon....
A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.
— I guess you believe in true love, don't you?
— I don't know, but they ought to invent a way that you don't have children... unless you care for each other, cos kids know the difference.
— Now be good for Grampa while we're at the parent-teacher meeting. We'll bring back dinner.
— What are we gonna have?
— Well, that depends on what your teachers say. If you've been good, pizza. If you've been bad... uh... let's see... poison.
— What if one of us has been good and one of us has been bad?
— Poison pizza.
— Oh, no. I'm not making two stops.
Important thing is not the me that's lying here, but the me that's sitting on the edge of the bed looking back at me, and the me that's downstairs cooking supper, or out in the garage under the car, or in the library reading. All the new parts, they count. I'm not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family. I'll be around a long time. A thousand years from now a whole township of my offspring will be biting sour apples in the gumwood shade. That's my answer to anyone asks big questions!