I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of the bathtub plug a man?

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship-only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.

Not everybody has to be a parent. In fact, in an overpopulated world where our resources are shrinking, it would be wonderful if people who didn't want children felt free to say so. In the 1970s, there was more tolerance for the idea that not everybody needs to be a biological parent.

Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.

It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.

is there not an Arabick Proverb which goes, 'No one throws Stones at a Barren Tree'?

The most important education you get is your own - the one you learn in solitude.