But that inadequacy, or feeling of inadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, regardless.

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father. And you know what they say? I could never do that!'

Everything one reads is nourishment of some sort - good food or junk food - and one assumes it all goes in and has its way with your brain cells.

The affectionate farce I make of him ignores the ways I feel his lack of love for me. But we are managing.

She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.

But that inadequacy, or feeling of inadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, regardless.

I always had the sense with her that she didn't suffer fools gladly but that life was taking great pains to show her how.