What is a staircase, but a corridor improved by elevation?

I hate it when people make fun of me and it turns out they're right.

Everyone's scared. So scared they can't sleep sometimes. Or eat. Or keep their weight on." "Then why bother playing?" I asked. It was a whisper, this question. "Because. You love the game. You love the people you play with. You love winning, maybe. You love that one moment when you get it right . . . I dunno. Why do you play?" "Because," I whispered, "it's who I am." Sounds like a good reason to me.

I milked, of course, and did some work around the barn, and tried not to think about Brian, which was like trying not to breathe.

Why was it that jam always coated me so?

Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase "happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. Yet these come at no small effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational women to set her straight.

I could not but wonder at the queen's unprecedented civility, until I realized with a flush of shame that it was my own improved behavior that motivated hers. So it is that we in life determine our own treatment.