He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'

Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, "Why are things the way they are?" Why should he bother, when the way they were was always perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no answer, and up till then he was so blessed he didn't even know the question existed.

I think you're a wonder. You're beautiful. You're mature. You are, I admit, vastly more experienced than I am. That's what threw me. I was thrown. Forgive me.

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again.

Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.