It's like you're born into a family -- you get up there in age, you leave home, but you're always part of the family. So I guess I'll always be a Red at heart.

She had not thought it would be so easy to slip into the old roles. Cambridge had changed her fundamentally and she thought she was immune. No one in her family, however, noticed the transformation in her, and she was not able to resist the power of their habitual expectations.

Mama and I sat on a burping bus full of chickens in cages, and round-eyed babies on round mothers' laps. (The Pinata-Maker's Daughter)

She was very cautious about locking her door and not letting people into her home that she didn't know.

In the age where the eight-cylinder Buick, the grey flannel suit and the tract home represented wholesomeness, ... Semina was the ultimate unwholesome object, and we gloried in it.

It was very much like losing a family member. And, of course, you never really get over it. You get through it and you rebuild your life. But it's always there. And I will always carry that with me.