That's the risk you take if you change: that people you've been involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do will come along.

The French would eat anything that couldn't outrun them.

The human organism has only so much energy at its disposal. If you divert a great deal of it into any one channel, you can expect the others to collapse or atrophy. If you squander your vital energies on your emotional life, as you have been doing, plan to be physically and mentally bankrupt, as it were.

successful parenting was like log rolling, and she'd often landed in the drink.

The only obvious advantage to being an adult is that you can eat your dessert without haying sampled the vegetables.

Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease.

If this was adulthood the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that she could now eat dessert without eating her vegetables.