“No one knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent.”

“Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: there's the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.”

“Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there's always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires.”

“Eating without conversation is only stoking.”

“Weather means more when you have a garden. There's nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans.”

“One sure way to lose another woman's friendship is to try to improve her flower arrangements.”

“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother...”

“We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...”

“Id never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons.”

“Blame is the creed of the disempowered.”

“The most judgmental people are often those who complain most about being judged. The ones not complaining will look as though they're the ones doing the judging.”

“A child is not to blame for being immersed in a certain environment and handed down complexes”

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”

“There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”

“The moral of the tale is, don't live for the approval of others. The real you is here to find out the secret of life, not to satisfy someone else's opinion.”