High fashion has the shelf life of potato salad. And when past its prime, it is similarly deadly.

Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story. All human odes are essentially one, "My life; what I stole from history, and how I live with it.

School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind.

If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business.

Morality is not a large, constructed *thing* you have or have not, but simply a capacity. Something you carry with you in your brain and in your hands.

Your own family resemblances are a frustrating code, most easily read by those who know you least.

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.