suffering is as necessary to entertaining as vermouth is to a Martini - a small but vital ingredient.

The knowingness of little girls, is hidden underneath their curls.

The Enemy, who wears her mother's usual face and confidential tone, has access; doubtless stares into her writing case and listens on the phone.

Scratch any father, you find / Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors, / Believing change is a threat.

It's this no-nonsense side of women that is pleasant to deal with. They are the real sportsmen.

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.

Say what you will, making marriage work is a woman's business. The institution was invented to do her homage; it was contrived for her protection. Unless she accepts it as such --as a beautiful, bountiful, but quite unequal association --the going will be hard indeed.