That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.

A story is how we construct our experiences.

The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.

She was thirty-nine. No, she did not envy her eighteen-year- old self at all. But she did envy, envied every day more bitterly, that young girl's genuine independence, largeness, scope, and courage.

You have to be grown up, really grown up, not merely in years, to understand your parents.

I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.