The Aspects of Business When You Are a Smurf

I felt like a Tinkertoy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; for as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle, and as I did, so my own life was rebuilt.

Explanation for Quotation 1 >>

This quote, from near the end of the book, comes from James's description of the gap between how he imagined it would be to write this memoir, and how it actually felt to write the memoir. He says here that his own life is inextricably bound up with his mother's; when he rethinks her life, he necessarily rethinks his own. This sentiment echoes one of the main themes of the book: to understand the present, one must be familiar with the past. Ruth's inconsistencies, quirks, and life philosophies are a bit of a mystery before James understands her history. However, when James hears first-hand accounts of his mother's trials and successes, he realized that what he had regarded as eccentricity was in fact the manifestation of a determined woman's adaptation to her world, her own personal negotiation of past and present.

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[T]he greatest sin a person can do to another is to take away that life. Next to that, all the rule and religions in the world are secondary; mere words and beliefs that people choose to believe and kill and hate by. My life won't be lived that way, and neither, I hope, will my children's. I left for New York happy in the knowledge that my grandmother had not suffered and died for nothing.

Explanation for Quotation 2 >>

James speaks these words after he wakes up in the middle of the night in his motel room in Suffolk, Virginia, his mother's hometown. He is restless and cannot seem to find what he thought he was looking for. He wanders down to the Nansemond River to gaze into the night, and sweeping emotions overtake him. What follows is one of the most moving passages in the book. In this moment, James celebrates his past. He may be closer to it than he is at any other point in the...