"Haven't I always been a cannibal? As a child I sucked my mother's breasts, draining her flesh. I longed to taste the salt of her blood through the salt of milk, trying to replace the blood that used to come to me through the umbilical cord, to flow through me like alcohol through an alcohol addict. Maybe only those of us who remember mother's blood become alcoholics, trying not to forget but to remember. We started with the mother; our basic nature stems not from the assassination of the father but from the slow killing of the mother."

Josip Novakovich, In the Same Boat, New Directions, 55