I felt as if I had no control over what I said, as if loathsome, ugly words were waiting inside me like snakes and toads looking for a chance to sneak out before I could stop them.

I looked forward to making friends at school, but I had come late and friendships had already been formed. I couldn’t find my way into their world. They seemed to have a secret code I couldn’t decipher.

I thought I understood what was best. I knew too little and believed too soon.

People long to go backward in their imagination as well as forward. We don't wish simply to exist forever in some future we wish to have existed in some distant past.

You're making yourself too important. Guilt comes from feeling we're at the center of the universe. We're not.

But will you not have a house to care for? Meals to cook? Children whining for this or that? Will you have time for the work? I'll make time, I promised. The house will not always be so clean, the cooking may be a little hasty, and the whining children will sit on my lap and I'll sing to them while I work.

They were all brilliant. They wrote books and painted pictures, and if they ever stopped talking, which I was sure they would never do, they planned to change the world.

I find having your own car is like a passport to the world.

I couldn’t live with myself if I thought nothing could get better.