To grow old is to lose everything.
Each year the big garden grew smaller and Jane - who grew flowers by choice, not corn or stringbeans - worked at the vegetables more than I did. Each winter I dreamed crops, dreamed marvels of canning . . . and each summer I largely failed. Shamefaced, I planted no garden at all.
The greatest kindness would put a bullet in his bright eye.
Opposites are attracted when each one is anxious about its own character.
Your presence in this house is almost as painful and enormous as your absence.
To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content.