This is my thought, that for every soul, something must come to pass, and for everything that does come to pass, every soul can imagine many things that might have come to pass, all of them less evil...
The plant succession that had begun in March with snowdrops and early crocuses would soon flicker out in a blaze of orange chrysanthemums and show its last pinpoints of color in bittersweet and ash be...
The best that can happen to a girl, Claire, is to be a bit plain, like you. You think I’m being unkind, but I am telling you a truth. A plain girl has a longer time to herself, and when a man falls in...
She said, Some are born bossy, some achieve bossiness, and some have bossiness thrust upon them.
She knew she had become the strange sort of lady that she remembered noticing as a child, the sort of lady who was always neat and kind, whose house was quiet because there were no children, who hoste...
Linda was just born when I had my first miscarriage, and for a while, six months maybe, the sight of those two babies, whom I had loved and cared for with real interest and satisfaction, affected me l...
I’m not strange to myself, but I realize that I contrast with others fairly sharply.
Hmm, What did I love? I think all the scents. Mama's lilac trees, and the wild iris in the fields, and rain on the breeze on a hot day. Apple and pear blossoms. The hay just cut. The mix of odors in t...
Her parents took her very seriously; she had trained them, with a combination of treats and punishments, to allow her to do as she pleased and express herself, and to pay attention to her opinions. Th...
And of course there was no help for it, except recalling bits of conversations she had overheard from time to time about marriage. That’s what knitting groups and sewing groups were for, wasn’t it? Co...
After he got back to his apartment that evening, Arthur remembered how completely he'd thought he'd solved the problem of his own childhood once he'd claimed Lillian and enveloped her in his dream--no...
Contemplate the difference between a reason and an excuse. A reason is its own reward, but an excuse leads to disappointment every time.
Cats swore that they had pretended to be domesticated to protect themselves—any cat who lived with a human did so under duress, and all cats escaped whenever they could.
To bring him into such agonies as a man should never know, to deny him shrift, to tear his flesh shred from shred. And how will I ever be forgiven for such a lust as this?
There were so many things Rosanna could have been besides a farm wife, she thought. But it was not a source of regret—it was a source of pride.
The plays he had liked were the one called Measure for Measure, and another one called Macbeth. They were easy to follow, and what happened in them was kind of like what happened in junior high school...
So all I have is the knowledge that I saw! That I saw without being afraid and without turning away, and that I didn’t forgive the unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can’t stand what y...
She could not have created this moment, these lovely faces, these candles flickering, the flash of the silverware, the fragrances of the food hanging over the table, the heads turning this way and tha...
I’ve experienced having you in the house. It’s like living with a loud motor running all the time. Up, down, into this room and that room, eating supper, jumping from the table, cursing all the time,...
It is hard to know whether an air of self-confidence precedes or follows success.