You can believe in women's rights without believing that every woman is right.

Maybe at 20 you can write well, but I don't think you could do what I do. Some things have to happen to you first.

Age is an accumulation of life and loss. Adulthood is a series of lines crossed.

I suppose we make kids the repository of our highest ideals because children are powerless. In that way we can have ideals and ignore them at the same time.

Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable.

Every thing, even the so-called timesaving device and energy-efficient machine, comes these days with an elaborate set of instructions for its care and feeding. Buying a machine has become more and more like buying a pet. ... We are time-crunched. Not just by the number of things we have to do, but the number of things we have. In the late twentieth century, things have become our new dependents.

We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.