the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners

Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.

The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.

The talkers are rising above the thinkers.

I can count all the ways in which being a mother has enriched my understanding of the world, of character, my sense of the future and my attachment to it. I can't imagine what kind of writer I'd be if I didn't have my kids.

You know things are bad when a woman without any legs and who recently lost two of her own kids feels sorry for you.

Independence is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether you're a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democrac and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.