Autumn can be glorious but menacing too - the long shadows, brisk winds, scurrying leaves, impending frost.

Life has a way of taking its toll on the person you thought you were.

She didn't know then that life has a way of backing you into a corner. You make your choices when you're far too young to understand their implications, and with each choice you make the field of possibility narrows. You choose a career and other careers are lost to you. You choose a mate and commit to loving no other.

Basic personality traits develop early in life and over time become inviolable, hardwired. Most people learn little from experience, rarely thinking of adjusting their behavior, see problems as emanating from those around them, and keep on doing what they do in spite of everything, for better or worse.

It’s a known fact that in certain contexts people’s great strengths become their epic failings.

You will not be the same person coming out of a relationship as you were going into it.

There are lots of reasons why a woman stays with a man, even when she's given up on changing him and can predict with certainty the shape that the rest of her life with him is going to take.