For that's what a woman, a mother wants - to teach her children to take an interest in life. She knows it's safer for them to be interested in other people's happiness than to believe in their own.

When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.

In a thousand years time this day will have existed for a thousand years to the day. And the ignorance of the whole world about what they've said today will have a date too.

I often think of the image only I can see now, and of which I’ve never spoken. It’s always there, in the same silence, amazing. It’s the only image of myself I like, the only one in which I recognize myself, in which I delight

For that's what a woman, a mother wants - to teach her children to take an interest in life. She knows it's safer for them to be interested in other people's happiness than to believe in their own.

When you wept it was just over yourself and not because of the marvelous impossibility of reaching her through the difference that separates you.

Banality is sometimes striking.