I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend.

My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it.

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic--you were made to feel guilty about everything

The facts didn't matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.

He put the blinker on, pulled out onto the avenue. "Well, that was nice," she said, sitting back. They had fun together these days, they really did. It was as if marriage had been a long, complicatd meal, and now there was this lovely dessert.

I have to pay attention to what I have felt and observed, then push these responses to an extreme while keeping the story within the realm of being psychologically and emotionally true.

It’s just that I’m the kind of person,' Rebecca continued, 'that thinks if you took a map of the whole world and put a pin in it for every person, there wouldn’t be a pin for me.