Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.

She was an expert at the art of sudden appearance.

I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.

Here is the trap you are in.... And it's not my trap—I haven't trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice—and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you're trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you.

If you don't feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn't very vital.

You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.

To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.