Parents and children were put on earth to give each other grief. You were my punishment for how I behaved to my own father. And I'll have my revenge when you have children of your own.

Enigmatic - the quality of keeping silent and making people wonder if one is stupid rather than opening one's mouth and removing all doubt.

Life is a good deal more comfortable if one doesn't expect it to be fair.

A witty vicar once said that a good marriage is like a pair of scissors with the couple inseparable joined, often moving in opposite directions, yet always destroying anyone who comes between them. The trick is for the blades to learn to work smoothly together, so as not to cut each other.

Competence is a great creator of confidence.

we all grow up thinking our parents found us under cabbage leaves and that sex didn't exist before our personal coming-of-age.

But why, she thought wryly, did a man seem more attractive as he became less available? How humbling to think one had so much in common with a cow stretching its neck through a gate for better grass.

[On New York City:] From a dating point of view, it's like a really large rummage sale - lots of strange items, but darned little that you'd want to take home.

Principles are sometimes an unaffordable luxury.

Once you can fake sincerity, you can fake anything.

Like cats and ice cream, showers were among life's simple, uncomplicated pleasures.