But what's so great about being a perfectionist?... You do all this work, and then the stuff you've made just pisses you off.

It was important to me to put together a future history that would scan, and serve as the backdrop to the domestic story. Economics is really what drives the plot.

When you've been afraid of something for long enough and it comes to pass, the terrible thing is a release. For in the belly of the badness there is no more fear.

Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.

For women, marriages foreclosed often resulted in an accumulation of booty; for men, these failed projects of implausible optimism were more likely to manifest themselves in material lack. It was hard to resist the metaphorical impression that women got to keep the past itself, whereas men were simply robbed of it.

You were ambitious - for your life, what it was like when you woke up in the morning, and not for some attainment. Like most people who did not answer a particular calling from an early age, you placed work beside yourself; any occupation would fill up your day but not your heart. I liked that about you. I liked it enormously.

Besides, I'd heard too many Karen Carpenter tales at Gladstone PTA meetings, and they often took the form of boasts. The prestigious diagnosis of anorexia seemed much coveted not only by the students but by their mothers, who would compete over whose daughter ate less. No wonder the poor girls were a mess.