She was an auxiliary nurse but training to be a true nurse because that was her calling, to serve mankind. She was a Martha. There were Marys and Marthas, but Marys got all the limelight because of being Christ's handmaiden, but Marthas were far more sincere.

Death in its way comes just as much of a surprise as birth.

In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.

I did not sleep. I never do when I am over-happy, over-unhappy, or in bed with a strange man.

To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came to admire Joyce even more because he never ceased working, those words and the transubstantiation of words obsessed him. He was a broken man at the end of his life, unaware that Ulysses would be the number one book of the twentieth century and, for that matter, the twenty-first.

jealousy is the direct result of self-betrayal.

Sometimes one word can recall a whole span of life.