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.

I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.

It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.

It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.

I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.

I suspect that marriage is like parenthood: every last one of us is an amateur at it.

I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.