He had lunch with Cecilia that afternoon. They ate their corned beef on rye and cream cheese with lox in a diner peopled by waiters who looked like they´d met with utter disappointment and become attached to it.

I know several women my age who are really poor...because they spent most of their energy taking care of children.

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.

She disapproved, but part of her seemed secretly to sympathize with the sickness. It was like she thought everybody had it, and the best you could do was to cover it up, and sometimes it would just come boiling out anyway. Then you had to point at it and condemn it, even though you knew you had it too.

The best definition I've heard is that guilt is about what you've done, shame is about who you are. If something's out of my control, I don't feel shame about it, because what could I have done? If you're guilty, you can at least try to atone for it or make it better or not do it again. If it's who you are, you can't do much about it except change yourself, and that's pretty hard.

People still think that a woman who doesn't have children or doesn't want children is really lacking in something. I've seen this over and over again in my life. I've had this thinking used against me repeatedly. I remember I had a therapist once, and I brought this up, and she said, "Well, I think women who don't have children feel very self-critical. They feel bad, so they think other people are critical in that way."

When I was a kid, I did want to be a boy. I didn't like to play with dolls, and most of my friends were kind of sensitive, sissy boys. But as I got older, the mystique of being a girl began to interest me. It was confusing what sexuality was, and the responses of other people, but it didn't make me feel terrified or vulnerable.