“Far too many people opened their hearts and lives at the drop of a hat. Why give someone that power over you? Why endow them with the ability to hurt you that much? Let someone in and you were aski...”

“That's what came from having romance in your soul. You believe in things like love at first sight and perfect presents.”

“The only thing for it is to use men for sex and never let any of them get so close they could hurt you.”

“Share too much and someone can hurt you.”

“Every second counts”

“If things go wrong, you don't have to accept you made a bum decision.”

“...I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday - the longer, the better - from the great boarding-school, where we are for...”

“He went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of ho...”

“The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about, and opening them. Three hundred sixty-five days late...”

“Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that t...”

“As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.”

“Families share relationships based not only blood, but also the unique affiliation of a terribly long cord when measured in comparison with any other undertaking in a persons life, from cradle to t...”