I tried to continue, but somehow my throat made up its mind to swallow – though I can’t think what I was swallowing, unless it was a little knot of emotion I pushed back down because there was no room in my face for any more.

A memoir provides a record not so much of the memoirist as of the memoirist's world.

All at once I felt so vain, like a girl posturing for the crowds as she walks along, only to discover the street is empty.

The corridor couldn't have smelled more strongly of fish guts if we had actually been inside a fish.

How many times already had I encountered the painful lesson that although we may wish for the barb to be pulled from our flesh, it leaves a welt that doesn't heal?

Anyone can have a good day. The question is what do you do on a bad day. That's when you're being tested. In a very tangible sense, a bad day shows your innermost essence more than a good day.

We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them.