They were all gone now, broken or taken by people who had no idea what such items represented. Let them go. She held the past in her heart, with no need of physical items to tie it down.

Do you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?

I don't want to have these burdens. But I can't bear to turn them over to anyone else, either. Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life.

There was, she suddenly saw, many ways to be raped.

Be who you are longing to be, practice thinking of yourself as the person of your dreams.

Change is disturbing when it is done to us, exhilarating when it is done by us.

One day I have a revelation. ‘I think we’re actually quite compatible, ’ I tell him. ‘You’re irritable, and I’m irritating.

Golf is a worrier's game, inward, concentrated, a matter of inches, invented by the same people who gave us Presbyterianism.

I feel responsible; I feel I've got to do something that will leave the kids a place where they can live healthy, safe, productive, creative and prosperous lives.

And now, I'm thinking again, isn't there something we can do about something we can't do anything about?

The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens.

The world is a library of strange and wonderful books, and sometimes we just need to go prowling through the stacks.

Only God gets things right the first time.