Alice Steinbach

“As I set out each day, I felt like a young child again. One who hadn't yet learned the rules of manmade time; the rules of clocks and calendars, of weekdays and weekends. Except the primitive markers of day and night, time lay ahead of me in a continuous, undefined mass.”

“What is the purpose of memory? Is it a trick to make sure we don't forget who we are by reminding us of who we were?”

“Things happen, I thought, and we respond. That's what it all comes down to. To believe anything else, as far as I could tell, was simply an illusion.”

“Being a student meant always looking up to someone wiser and always measuring yourself against that wisdom and knowledge.”

“Freedom has its dangers as well as its joys. And the sooner we learn to get up after a fall, the better off we'll be.”

“Life is like that I thought, as I turned the corner to my building. Freedom has its danger as well as its joys. And the sooner we learn to get up after a fall, the better off will be.”

“In many ways I was an independent woman. For years I'd made my own choices, paid my own bills, shoveled my own snow.”

“Maybe it was I who needed to learn how to be quiet instead of cluttering the moment with too many words.”

“His presence made me feel self-concious: of my appearance, of the way I was sitting, of my movements and gestures...It was the behavior of a woman reacting to a man who attracts her.”

“I'm a woman in search on an adventure”

“I sat silent, ambushed by love for my sons. And by regret. Regret for the past, when I didn't or couldn't give them the nurturing they needed, and regret for what they-and I-could never have back. The irony was that now, when my sons no longer needed it, my love for them was unconditional. Sometimes, when either of my children came up against a thorny problem, I found myself worrying: did I give him what he needs to deal with this? Could I have done better? I could do better now, I thought. Now that it's too late.But when you speak of your sons it is always with admiration. Is it true you would like to return and do things that might change who they are?”

“Women, I learned, adapted.At first..they seemed so fragile, so dependent on fathers and husbands and brothers and lovers. Gradually, though, I noticed how supple their lives were beneath the surface. Then I realized it was this flexibility that enabled them to survive...that sooner or later, by choice or by chance, most women faced the task of adapting to a future on their own. When at my most optimistic, I thought of it as independence; in darker moods, as survival. Either way women had to do it.”

“Women would be better off when they no longer needed men more than they needed their own independent identities...How long a time it took me after my divorce to understand that being alone is not the same as being lonely.”

“It used to surprise me, the intensity with which I still remembered these distant memories. But when I entered my fifties...I understood their enduring clarity....In the end, what adds up to a life is nothing more than the accumulation of small daily moments.”

“What if more of life could be like that? Like the last slow dance, where, to echo T.S. Eliot, a lifetime burns in every moment.”

“What adds up to a life is nothing more than the accumulation of small daily moments.”

“And who's to say that just because something lasts only a short time, it has little value?”

“I suspected, however, that I wasn't homesick for anything I would find at home when I returned. The longing was for what I wouldn't find: the past and all the people and places there were lost to me.”

“A letter is always better than a phone call. People write things in letters they would never say in person. They permit themselves to write down feelings and observations using emotional syntax far more intimate and powerful than speech will allow.”

“I suppose that, after the passion of love, water rights have caused more trouble than anything else to the human species.”

“It is one of the strongest bonds, I think, that can spring up between people: sharing a passion for certain books and their authors.”

“Going back to school is like going back in time. Immediately, for better or for worse, you must give up a little piece of your autonomy in order to become part of the group. And every group, of course, has its hierarchies and rules- spoken and unspoken. It is like learning to live once again in a family- which, of course, is the setting where all learning begins.”