“God not da faddah, he just the spoiled moody child, but you got to go t'rough him to get to da real power, his mama, Mot'er God. She da real Almighty! She run da heavens alone. Original single parent. When somethin' bad happen, usually mean she let God try his hand, and he screw up plenny. You need something important, you go directly Mot'er God. Jesus, Mary, Joseph? Dey just small potatoes, part of the chorus, neh?”

“Common sense. Mothers are the last riddle, the worst horror, the only consolation.”

“So much easier to give. I detest asking.”

“Beware of logic.”

“Got something to do with guilt,' Toro said. 'Her mother,neh?' 'Guilt. Longing. Got something to do with all of us.”

“When you hate something for twenty years, you get to know it well.”

“We love that which we corrupt.”

“Time, the thing we can't beat back... Yet, time is also what it takes to heal, what it takes for certain memory cells to die. Maybe time doesn't heal. Maybe it doesn't even pass. We pass through time, and come out stunned, so rage, and memory, are blurred.”

“You think knowing things will solve your private little griefs?”

“They would no longer be time-bound, that they were free to live in the future, the past, in fantasy. She had been a woman preparing to live, not living.”

“She was kahuna, creating more life around her than was actually there, heightening the momentousness of each living thing by simply gazing upon it.”