It was not miserable - often I did not miss her at all. But there was sometimes a quick, sinking ache when I walked in the door and saw she was not there. Twice, however, I'd felt the same sinking feeling when she was.

The problem with a beautiful woman is that she makes everyone around her feel hopelessly masculine, which if you’re already male to begin with poses no particular problem. But if you’re anyone else, your whole sexual identity gets dragged into the principal’s office: “So what’s this I hear about you prancing around, masquerading as a woman?” You are answerless. You are sitting on your hands. You are praying for your breasts to grow, your hair to perk up.

Better to think of writing, of what one does, as an activity, rather than an identity to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun.

It was part of being a girl in the '60s that you were creative.

People will do anything, anything, for a really nice laugh.

But family life sometimes had a vortex, like weather. It could be like a tornado in a quiet zigzag: get close enough and you might see within it a spinning eighteen-wheeler and a woman.

If God Speaks Through Burning Bushes, Let's Burn Bush and Listen to What God Says.