There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.

Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?

Something was wrong with a world where people came and went so easily.

My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations.

Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.

I mean you're given all these lessons for the unimportant things--piano-playing, typing. You're given years and years of lessons in how to balance equations, which Lord knows you will never have to do in normal life. But how about parenthood? Or marriage, either, come to think of it. Before you can drive a car you need a state-approved course of instruction, but driving a car is nothing, nothing, compared to living day in and day out with a husband and raising up a new human being.

Women were the ones that held the reins, it emerged.