"Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted."
"You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute."
"A funeral is no place for secrets."
"Things change when you're not in danger anymore."
"I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't."
"You have one family, Charley. For good or bad. You have one family. You can’t trade them in. You can’t lie to them. You can’t run two at once, substituting back and forth.“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family."
"Tell me about your family," I said. And so she did. I listened intently as my mother went through each branch of the tree. Years later, after the funeral, Maria had asked me questions about the family - who was related to whom - and I struggled. I couldn't remember. A big chunk of our history had been buried with my mother. You should never let your past disappear that way."
"I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't.But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins."
"...But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins."
"Every family is a ghost story."
"When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth."
"Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted."
"Never tell a child that something it’s too hard"
"Belief, hard work, love–you have those things, you can do anything."
"Belief, hard work, love - you have those things, you can do anything."
"What is it?”“A prayer.”“For a child?”She nodded.“For me?”Another nod.“On a tree?”“Trees spend all day looking up at God."
"Being unheard is the ground floor of giving up, and giving up is the ground floor of doing yourself in. It’s not so much, what’s the point? It’s more like, what’s the difference?"
"The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone."
"I don't know what it is about the food your mother makes for you, especially when it's something that anyone can make - pancakes, meat loaf, tuna salad - but it carries a certain taste of memory."
"I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought u wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else."
"When you're rotten about yourself, you become rotten to everyone else, even thoseyou love."
"What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked it's hard to believe you ever were a child?"
"I didn't want to be ordinary," I mumbled.My mother looked up. "What ordinary, Charley?""You know. Someone you forget."From the other room came the squeals of children. Miss Thelma turned her chin to the sound. She smiled,"That's what keeps me from being forgotten."
"The more you defend a lie, the angrier you become."
"Remember me for these days, not the old ones."