I was the youngest of nine siblings. . . I lost my father when I was just 13. For me, the elders have been my gods.
Everyone likes to talk shop, which is the most interesting talk in the world, in the beginning.
A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.
Power consists to a large extent in deciding what stories will be told.
Ideas move fast when their time comes.
Normal is absolutely my least favorite word.
Why do long marriages occasionally endow their inhabitants with a rare kind of equilibrium otherwise almost unknown in human relations? My guess is that the value of the moment has at last overshadowed the long history of resentments, betrayals, and boredom.
A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that phantom "opinion" than he should fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the churchyard at dark.
The truth was that she had managed to betray everyone by doing nothing. No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong. Not cheating on a non-boyfriend with the non-boyfriend of a friend. The pressure of thinking that one through made her swollen body ache.
If people want to believe in this god, or that god, that's fine by me, believe away.
Strong relationships are not rocked by a truth that is grounded by resolute monogamy.