“Its unthinkable, now to live as her parents had done, going to work from nine to five and enjoying the benefits of the newly-formed health and education services. What paradise it had seemed! Now, ...”

“Its not by accident that people talk of a state of confusion as not being able to see the wood for the trees, or of being out of the woods when some crisis is surmopunted. It is a place of loss, co...”

“They might watch American movies, wear American clothes, even read American books but Bush and the Iraq War have made actual American people social lepers; she only has to open her mouth in some pl...”

“Few pretty and privileged young women really understand the essential injustice of biology...For most of her life as a woman, the rules were perfectly clear cut: other women were the enemy, and all...”

“Family is all politics. Everyone hates each others guts, if theyre honest Most brothers and sisters try to top each other, given the chance; you always get the worst wars in countries with big fami...”

“Familiarity breeds sentiment before contempt.”

“It had been an awful thing to lose Henry the first time, to matrimony, but to discover what a false front he was capable of was another kind of blow, and it had left her almost speechless. Then the...”

“Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.”

“Mostly, what people mean by love is laziness.”

“It is so hard to leaveuntil you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.”

“I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere between Mrs.W...”

“Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into a confused unity, the attention is dispersed so that the...”

“We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work”

“Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy; and he that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty s...”

“My get-up-and-go often leaves without me.”