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

One didn't issue instructions to comets. Grown children did what they had to do, and parents could only grit their teeth and watch and pray for them to get through it.

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.

Inspiration never arrived when you were searching for it.

It had been fourteen years and I hadn't had anything published. I had 250 rejection slips. I got my first novel published and it was called Kinflicks. It turned out to be a best seller.

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

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