The secret is that there is no secret.

Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.

Change is like that: you are no longer where you were; you are not yet where you will get; you are nowhere exactly.

Now that children don't till your fields or take you in when you're incontinent, there is no sensible reason to have them, and it's amazing that with the advent of effective contraception anyone chooses to reproduce at all.

Half an ear cocked, something in me, all night, every night, is waiting for you to come home.

Though it may be more romantic to picture the bereaved as gaunt, I imagine you can grieve as efficiently with chocolates as with tap water.

Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.