I wasn't born to a wealthy or powerful family - mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx.

When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover.

I know there's something troubling you. I'm not going to ask what it is, if you don't want to tell me. But remember that I'm your mother. Nothing you say could ever shock me or make me love you less.

We want Max to... breed. To produce heirs. Who will govern the world after she dies."Dead silence for quite some time. We all stared at Dr. Hans, our jaws dropped to various levels. Our lives had...

I get out of the car, and I'm blasted by the stench of body odor. Cricket is beside me, and he's talking, but his words don't reach my ears.Because it's my mother.Smelling.On my porch.

What do you think was the first sound to become a word, a meaning?..

wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything.I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She...

By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.

My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.

In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.

When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again, yet after having given birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all...

There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage,...

You're the kind of man my mother warned me about.

Mum always says the right thing. She always makes everything better.

All those calm, adult discussions. When all she really wanted to do was scream for her momma, her sweet momma, the one person in the world who loved her better than anyone ever would or ever could.

Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was...

But then, I knew so little about my mother over the last decade of her life. I had been too wrapped up in my own drama.

Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.