One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.
Some secrets are meant to stay secret forever.
It was like she was thinking, How far can I go with this? How much more can I fit in my life without losing control?
Happy endings always made her cry. It was the relief.
Why did she give up wine for Lent? Polly was more sensible. She had given up strawberry jam. Cecilia had never seen Polly show more than a passing interest in strawberry jam, although now, of course, she was always catching her standing at the open fridge, staring at it longingly. The power of denial.
Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else.
If parents had children who were good sleepers, they assumed this was due to their good parenting, not good luck.
The New York Times, they lie. They lie like I've never seen anything.
Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it is hard to keep a healthy attitude toward it in our competitive, outcome-oriented society.
I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled towards absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks.
A refrigerator runs by converting the dust behind it into a peculiar mutant, reptilian substance.