Perhaps this is how you know you’re doing the thing you’re intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it’s a waste of time.

Children are nothing but a problem people create and then congratulate themselves on solving.

We have to make mistakes, it’s how we learn compassion for others.

There was a way in which my grandmother’s true self was not these guests’ business; no one’s true self was the business of more than a very small number of family members or close friends.

you know what her punishment is for tormenting you way back when?” he said.I looked at him.He said, “her punishment is being her,

I wanted to hold happiness in reserve, like a bottle of champagne. I postponed it because I was afraid, because I overvalued it, and then I didn’t want to use it up, because what do...

Since I was a small girl, I have lived inside this cottage, shelted by its roof and walls. I have known of people suffering—I have not been blind to them in the way that privilege...

..and I thought how liking a boy was just the same as believing you wanted to know a secret – everything was better when you were denied and could feel tormented by curiousity or loneliness....

How quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound.

From then on, as long as I was at Ault, I would never be alone. Martha and I would get along, our friendship would last. I felt certainty and relief. Years later, I heard a...

Foolish names and foolish faces often appear in public places.

At this point, does anyone expect the liberals not to be total hypocrites?” She was oblivious to the possibility that perhaps not everyone present shared her views, and I thought, You’re sixteen. How can you...

You don’t make waves unless there’s a reason, and it better be good. Because once you do, that’s it. You’re a trouble make, and they never think of you any other way.

She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it.

Mama!’ Rosie tugged on my shirt. ‘This broccoli is tasty and wonderful’.