I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking myself as seriously as the next writer.

Life, in her experience, had a kind of velvet luster. You looked at yourself from one perspective and all you saw was weirdness. Move your head a little bit, though, and everything looked reasonably normal.

I admire your capacity for admiring.

she was so much a personality and so little anything else that even staring straight at her he had no idea what she really looked like.

Nothing got inside the head without becoming pictures.

I find it a huge strain to be responsible for my tastes and be known and defined by them.

...She felt that nothing could kill her hope now, nothing. She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life.