I've read there is no such thing as a single tear, that old poetic trope. And perhaps there isn't, since hers was simply a companion to my own.

The thing that most haunted me that day, however...was the fact that these things had - apparently - actually occurred...For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you've seen that truth - really seen it - you can't look away.

It's a shame for women's history to be all about men--first boys, then other boys, then men men men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over whenever they occurred. (Our teachers deplored this and added extra units about social history and protest movements, but that was still the message of the books.)

My guess is that he remembers some of me, some of us together, and the rest rolled off him like topsoil in a flash flood.

He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them.

No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.

Sometimes people damage paintings or sculpture because they love it. They throw their arms around a statue in a fit of hysterical passion and it falls over.