Status Updates From Black Flame

"'Why are you doing this to me?' she whispered. 'Was I such a horrible mother?'

'Yes,' said Ellen. A strange peace was settling over her. 'You were a nightmare, actually, when you could be bothered to talk to us. You ruined our lives.'"

"She felt fear, an old and deeply ingrained fear of her mother's temper, but much more acutely she felt pity for the sad, frantic, ugly little person in front of her, a woman who had never really lived, who had made it her life's work to ensure no one disrupted the brittle rhythm of her own small, personal misery."

"...she thought how incredible it was to love someone so small and helpless, and how certain she was that she could never do it. She would never have a child, never subject someone to the ordeal of being mothered. That water was full of broken glass."

"Growing up, Ellen had always felt most Jewish when she saw the way the goys reacted to death. There was a horror to it, a kind of hysterical denial. Their lives ground to a halt. Even in her family, sucked dry of all but the last vestiges of culture, death was weather. A guest. A friend of the family. It happened, and you went on with your life. What else were you going to do?"