“I look upon a year lived as a year earned; and each year earned means a greater treasury of experience and power laid up against time of need.”

“Each literature bears its freight of the eclipsed; each generation shows us writers in the process of disappearing.”

“For the young the days go fast and the years go slow; for the old the days go slow and the years go fast.”

“I mark my years or parenting by the people who stepped in and forced me to abandon my inclination to meddle, micromanage, and coddle, beginning with my children's father, who sat me down and told me in year two that I was going to create a little monster if I continuted to act as though "no" and "I don't love you" were synonomous.”

“The first few years eamonn and I were together I wasn't sure I even liked him, let alone loved him.”

“After my mother died, I had a feeling that was not unlike the homesickness that always filled me for the first few days when I went to stay at my grandparents'' house, and even, I was stunned to discover, during the first few months of my freshman year at college. It was not really the home my mother had made that I yearned for. But I was sick in my soul for that greater meaning of home that we understand most purely when we are children, when it is a metaphor for all possible feelings of security, of safety, of what is predictable, gentle, and good in life.”

“Let whoever wants to, relax in the south,And bask in the garden of paradise.Here is the essence of north—and it's autumnI've chosen as this year's friend.”