I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some period during the old days: hats like enormous halos, festooned with fruit and flowers, and the feathers of exotic birds; hats like an idea of paradise, floating just above the head, a thought solidified.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.

You can't keep a cool head when you're drowning in love. You just trash around a lot and scream, and wear yourself out.

In the First World War, people would be receiving letters from loved ones who had been dead for weeks, and they would not know until that black-bordered telegram arrived. I remember, of course, when it was letters only, or the telephone, and you did not make expensive long-distance calls unless it was, "Come home to the funeral," or the like.

it's doors I'm afraid of because I can't see through them, its the door opening by itself in the wind I'm afraid of.

I could end this with a moral, as if this were a fable about animals, though no fables are really about animals.

My family was scientifically inclined: My brother did turn into a neurophysiologist, and I almost became a scientist myself. I could have gone that way.