Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing. – Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1987

My mom is literally a part of me. You can’t say that about many people except relatives, and organ donors. – Carrie Latet, 2006

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends — but only one mother in the whole world. – Kate Douglas Wiggin