“What she did have, after raising two children, was the equivalent of a PhD in mothering and my undying respect.”

Choices are easy when you have nothing to lose.

I can’t spend the rest of my life competing for your attention and coming in last.

I had nothing to fear from my father. Except his disappointment. Which was no small thing.

Wolves go after a wounded deer, it is the nature of the beast.

If you want to disappear, Emily, you can do it most anywhere.

Rain didn’t make things messy. People did that all on their own.

You kids were all in college, and I suddenly saw that I was stuck alone with a man who, all those years later, was still wanting me to be someone I wasn’t.

My MOM shops at Wal-Mart! She gets calls all the time now; she’s worried about me! I’m not the most emotionally stable guy in the world; I’ll admit that.

Mom and Dad even took in foster children. ‘There are no limits to how much you can love,’ Dad always said.

Her mother told her she could grow up to be anything she wanted be, so she grew up to become the strongest of the strong, the strangest of the strange, the wildest of the wild, the wolf leading wolves.

They wrapped her up like a baby burrito to show to Mom. Here were a mother and her daughter and I love them both so much.

In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott’s psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.

My mom is the Kris Jenner of boxing.

What motivated me? My mother. My mother was an immigrant woman, a peasant woman, struggled all her life, worked in the garment center.

My mom sold real estate and did it part time.