Life would be grand if it weren't for the people.

As soon as a man and woman of almost any age are alone together within four walls it is assumed that anything may happen. Spontaneous combustion, instant fornication, triumph of the senses. What possibilities men and women must see in each other to infer such dangers. Or, believing in the dangers, how often they must think about the possibilities.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

In twenty years I've never had a day when I didn't have to think about someone else's needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it.

What she wants to do if she can get the time to do it, is not so much to live in the past as to open it up and get one good look at it".

People are curious. A few people are. ... They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.

For we did makeup. But we didn't forgive each other. And we didn't take steps. And it got to be too late and we saw that each of us had invested too much in being in the right and we walked away and it was a relief.