“You know the part in Cinderellawhen everyone goes to the balland she sits at home, crying?It wasn’t because her gown was ripped.It was because she knewshe was an idiotfor thinkingshe could grab a prince.”

“She cried for herself, she cried because she was afraid that she herself might die in the night, because she was alone in the world, because her desperate and empty life was not an overture but an ending, and through it all she could see was the rough, brutal shape of a coffin.”

“She smiled, not because she felt confident that she could think of a solution, but for the gratitude that she wasn’t quite so alone in her pursuit.”

“She cried because she'd had such high, high hopes about the Wheelers tonight and now she was terribly, terribly, terribly disappointed. She cried because she was fifty six years old and her feet were ugly and swollen and horrible; she cried because none of the girls had liked her at school and none of the boys had liked her later; she cried because Howard Givings was the only man who'd ever asked her to marry him, and because she'd done it, and because her only child was insane.”

“When you're young your mother shields you from the world because she thinks you're too young to understand, and when she's old you shield her because she's too old to understand - or to have any more understanding inflicted upon her. The curve of life goes: want to know, know, don't want to know.”

“She found it curious and frightening that she could deeply dislike someone she didn’t even know. It wasn’t her. At least, it wasn’t how she used to be.”