When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned from your Grandmother Henderson in Arkansas and what you have learned from me, you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don’t let anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will always have to make adaptations, in love relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don’t let anybody change your mind. And then remember this: You can always come home.

I don't think she ever knew that a deep-brooding love hung over everything she touched.

¨I am Lady, and still your mother.¨

My mother's gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin.

Baby, I've been thinking and now I am sure. You are the greatest woman I've ever met.

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.