As the most recently arrived to earthly life, children can seem in lingering possession of some heavenly lidless eye.

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

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

Once love had seemed like magic. Now it seemed like tricks.

Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.

If I had a staff of even one person, or could tolerate a small amphetamine habit, or entertain the possibility of weekly blood transfusions, or had been married to Vera Nabokov, or had a housespouse of even minimal abilities, a literary life would be easier to bring about. (In my mind I see all your male readers rolling their eyes. But your female ones - what is that? Are they nodding in agreement? Are their fists in the air?)

I wished for eternal and intriguing muteness. I would be the Mysterious Dumb Girl, the Enigmatic Elf. The human voice no longer interested me.