It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.

Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back.

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

We tap our toes to chaste love songs about the silvery moon without recognizing them as hymns to copulation.

I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they're feeling because that's how I read the seed catalogs in January.

Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.

The longer you live, the more likely you are to have something to say.