Old age is somewhat like dieting. Every day there is less of us to be observed.

Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation, the wait, the growing heaviness (not of body in this case but of the spirit and the manuscript) toward the end, the initial delight at the sight of the product, fully formed and seemingly perfect, and then the usual postpartum depression. What will people whose opinion I care about, and those whose views I don't value but have weight in the world of reader, think of it?

Praise requires constant renewal and expansion.

The reason that extended solitude seemed so hard to endure was not that we missed others but that we began to wonder if we ourselves were present, because for so long our existence depended upon assurances from them.

What others regard as retreat from them or rejection of them is not those things at all but instead a breeding ground for greater friendship, a culture for deeper involvement, eventually, with them.

A hand up is worthier than one's own fist grasping a higher rung of the ladder.

My eyes glaze over at a writer solving tiny problems.