She could not read a book for fear of the feelings she might find in it.

Boys do not leave their boyhood behind when they leave off their school uniform.

I am human. Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up to ourselves, we are little children, and our advent is something that happened an eternity ago, at the beginning of time. We live like latecomers to the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the begging from the shape of later events. - Vida Winter

All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.

There are times when the human face and body can express the yearning of the heart so accurately that you can, as they say, read them like a book. Do not abandon me.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it.