Pheromones are Earth's primordial idiom.

There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face.

It was the marriage that was important; Jane Austen rarely even bothered to write about the wedding.

Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation.

I once broke up with a boy because he wrote me an awful poem.

I thought there were moments to complain about your parents and moments to be grateful, and it was a shame to mix those moments up.

Arriving late was a way of saying that your own time was more valuable than the time of the person who waited for you.