The experience you’ve had may be unwanted, may amount to nothing but damage and waste, but experience has substance, is factual, authoritative, lives on in your past and affects your present, whatever you attempt to do about it.

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

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

In spite of what anyone says it’s women who make the rules.

In asserting that people don't change, what she means is that they don't change for the better. Whereas changing for the worse, that goes without saying.

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.

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.