“put Rachel facing the door, in a faint subtle effort to make her know that if he had only had enough money and had managed to finish the thesis, he might well have asked her to be his hostess and s...”

“I let myself exist mainly through my children... [but] I could not even guess at the lives my children led.”

“our dispassionate acceptance of attrition...[can] be matched by a full use of everything that has ever happened in all the long wonderful-ghastly years to free a person's mind from his body.”

“She resolved, at forty-some, that since she herself must die, she would do it as gracefully as possible, as free as possible from vomitings, moans, the ignominy of basins, bedsores, and enemas, not...”

“If I were rich, I would buy him a new black suit. ... If I had next week's allowance and had not spent this week's on three Cherry Flips ...”

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”

“Healing starts the moment you accept the truth about what has happened. But healing doesnt come quickly. When you know that death or pain has come, you face a moment when you stare that pain in the...”

“Scared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation.”

“Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.”

“If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the ...”

“The cause of every anomaly can be found in woman.”

“Perhaps that was a thing about attractive women: A rejection demanded their respect, made them trust you more.”

“I think Im very blessed to have been raised by so many intelligent and impressive women, and now continuing that on a professional level, having people like Sarah and Nadia to guide me through this...”