Widowers marry again because it makes their lives easier. Widows often don't, because it makes their lives harder. [p. 61]

Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.

The old story is true:Women have to be less emotional than men.

I don't want the words to be naked the way they are in faxes or in the computer. I want them to be covered by an envelope that you have to rip open in order to get at. I want there to be a waiting time -a pause between the writing and the reading. I want us to be careful about what we say to each other. I want the miles between us to be real and long. This will be our law -that we write our dailiness and our suffering very, very carefully.

A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.

Libraries are sexual dream factories. The langour brings it on.

There's a phenomenology of being sick, one that depends on temperament, personal history, and the culture which we live in.