But parents, she supposed, were not the pinnacle of perfection their children thought or expected them to be. They were humans who usually did the best they could but often made the wrong choices.

But parents, she supposed, were not the pinnacle of perfection their children thought or expected them to be. They were humans who usually did the best they could but often made the wrong choices.

If you have always suspected your sister of an inclination to madness, it will be my pleasure to confirm your worst fears.

The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.

I do beg you to have some regard for my pride. A million years? I assure you I would stop asking after the first thousand.

Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?

Did she ever feel nostalgia for any of her girlhood dreams? But life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on, one or two to persist for a lifetime. It was knowing when to abandon a dream, perhaps, that mattered and distinguished the successful people in life from the sad, embittered persons who never moved on from the first of life's great disappointments. Or from the airy dreamers who never really lived life at all.