“Everytime we use an invention or read a book or study a science or listen to music, we’re enjoying someone else’s idea— someone who may have lived thousands of years ago, and thousands of miles away from here.”

“Books and people are alike in one respect: they're both full of thoughts.”

“Somehow, when a person you like reads your poem and says they like it, the poem seems all fresh and new afterwards. I wonder why?”

“Never believe a promise from a man or woman who has no discipline. They have broken a thousand promises to themselves, and they break their promise for you.”

“It was a noteworthy lesson, even for someone who'd been fed a daily diet of italicized lessons: that people in high places, luminaries with advanced degrees in Classics and in possession of excellent manners, can disappoint you as profoundly as anyone else.”

“Ritualised child sexual abuse is about abuse of power, control and secrecy. Ten years ago many people found it difficult to believe that fathers actually raped their children, yet survivors of such abuses spoke out and eventually began to be listened to and believed. Ritual abuse survivors, when they try to speak out about their experiences, face denial and disbelief from society and often fear for their lives from the abusers.”

“That's how it was on Irving Circle and how I was raised: You made the best out of what was within reach, which meant friendships engineered by parents and by the happenstance of housing. I stayed with it because we both had queenly older sisters who rarely condescended to play with us, because Shelley was adopted and I was not, because Shelley had Clue and Life, and I did not”