A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. Think of it as the altar of the Muse Oblivion, to whom you sacrifice your botched first drafts, the tokens of your human imperfection.

Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

We battled in secret, undeclared, and after a while I no longer fought back because I never won. The only defense was flight, invisibility.

Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.

You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.

I am not a saint or a cripple, I am not a wound; now I will see whether I am a coward.