The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.

And sometimes I do freak out. Sometimes I get offended. I feel anxious, but it’s okay, because it usually goes away.

If wrappings of cloth can impart respectability, the most respectable persons are the Egyptian mummies, all wrapped in layers and layers of gauze

I hope people don't get tired of looking at me.

I hadn't written a love story before and I hadn't written a novel with a happy ending before.

I have never known what to tell anybody. Except that it is better to do something than nothing, even if the cost is great.

I won't lie to you, fatherhood isn't easy like motherhood.

I can establish the expectation of retributive justice. Have we done that? No.

Nobody ever invents anything You're inspired and sometimes you can improve.

At about the age of ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became aware of the concept of candy by the pound.

It is clear to us that, for good or for evil, our vitality is concentrated in our religion. You cannot change it. You cannot destroy it and put in its place another.