Dan suggested to Owen and me that we were better off to not involve ourselves with Hester. How true! But how we wanted to be involved in the thrilling real-life sleaziness that we suspected Hester was in the thick-of. We were in a phase, through television and the movies, of living only vicariously. Even faintly sordid silliness excited us if it put us in contact with love.

I have no respect for the right-to-life position, though I have every respect for an individual who says, "I could never have that procedure, I could never see a film or read a book about that procedure." It doesn't bother me if people feel that way.

Imagining something is better than remembering something.

No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen...You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.

… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.

Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.

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.