Sometimes [the expression] old age has a kind of harrowing beauty. But elderly - ugh!

...surely I could give him--a sort of contentment... That isn't enough to give. Not for the giver.

a loss of sensibility follows a loss of innocence, at once a penalty and a compensation.

I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.

Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one...I can well believe it.

Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't much like the look of? It is half real and half pretense - and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet an eligible young men. They just...wonder.

Time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.