so my grandmother was not without humanity. and if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in the garden, they were cocktail dresses she no longer intended to wear to cocktail parties. even in her rose garden she did not want to appear underdressed. if the dresses got too dirty from gardening, she threw them out. when my mother suggested to her that she might have them cleaned, my grandmother said, "what? and have those people at the cleaners what i was doing in a dress to make it that dirty?" from my grandmother i learned that logic is relative.

A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.

I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.

Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.

The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.

Our memory is a monster; you forget it - it does not.

Death, it seems," Garp wrote, "does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.