I do what I want to do. It was a brash statement of(her)girlhood. Now she was an adult, the boast seemed quaint. For rarely do you know what you want. Even after you've done it you can't say clearly if that was what you'd wanted or just something that happened to you, like weather.

A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.

The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.

Each genre exerts a considerable spell, as a kind of "form" to be filled, as a Shakespearean sonnet is filled.

Love is an indescribable sensation - perhaps a conviction, a sense of certitude.

What is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.

To the west, the Pacific Ocean, which revulses me, for its vastness cannot be fitted into any box.