She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural:out of time, out of order, a vicious re-run of your own departure into nothingness.

Marriage is what happens when one at least of the partners doesn't want the other to get away.

As it has turned out, the whole relationship between men, women and children has tilted, to the disadvantage of women.

The prophets of doom, in my experience, are generally ignored and usually right.

Much sheer effort goes into avoiding the truth; left to itself, it sweeps in like the tide.

Poverty is a stubborn thing: you seldom escape it with one bound.

For that is what a child should be, and seldom is, the product of man and woman, of opposing natures, unified, however temporarily, by the amazing, circling, weaving dance of love and lust and God's involvement in it.