It's possible to overlook character flaws of in-laws for the simple reason that you feel neither responsible for them nor genetically implicated.

What I discovered I liked best about striking out on my bicycle was that the farther I got from home, the more interesting and unusual my thoughts became.

You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.

I told him the truth, that I loved him and didn't regret anything about our lives together. But do we ever 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God' as my father used to say, to those we love? Or even to ourselves? Don't even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn't this why we can't help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven't been?

You can be interested in a Jane Smiley novel whether or not anyone says a word. She enters into her characters thoughts with great understanding and depth.

Odd that the future should be so difficult to bring into focus when the past, uninvited, offered itself up so easily for inspection.

Stories worked much the same way . . . A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.