You can teach people a lot about craft and various techniques, and you can certainly teach them to appreciate, but you cannot give them spirit or soul if it's not there.

That's why every society on the planet has very definite rules, ideas about how sex should be regulated, how sex should be expressed, what's okay, what's not okay. And I guess we do live in a place, and have for a long time, where there's more openness and there's more willingness to tolerate different kinds of behavior, but with that comes people creating other rules and other kinds of controls. It's always going to be a question of what's acceptable and what isn't and what's the danger point and what rouses people's contempt and what people are allowed to get away with.

The only way to know whats possible is to venture past impossible.

It was like everything that supported the relationship was coming from the outside. Judging by all the signs, we were a perfectly successful couple and John was an ideal husband for me - rich, blond, tall, sensitive, ad nauseam. But even worse, it seemed as if our most intimate conversations were based on what we were supposed to be saying, and what we were supposed to be. Nothing seemed to come directly from us.

I became very aware of how important it is to connect with children - possibly for the children, if they're in the mood for that - but certainly for the adults.

When you approach the second half of your life, you start to unconsciously consider what you're passing on. As a writer, that's obviously part of what you're doing. And as a teacher, that's another way of passing on information, history, or whatever you have.

Most women at retirement have significantly less money than men, and they still get paid less than men. I'm sure that in my reptile brain I'm quite conscious of this.