“this one-way rocket to Death in Adulthood" "Normal Time" in New California Writing”

“For everything there is a season. I'd miss having the seasons, people from New York like to say by way of indicating the extraordinary pride they take in not living in Southern California. In fact Southern California does have seasons (it has for example "fire season" or "the season when the fire comes," and it also has the season when the rains comes, but such Southern California seasons, arriving as they do so theatrically as to seem strokes of random fate, do not inexorably suggest the passage of time. Those other seasons, the ones so prized on the East Coast, do. Seasons in Southern California suggest violence, but not necessarily death.Seasons in New York-the relentless dropping of the leaves, the steady darkening of the days, the blue nights themselves-suggest only death.”

“Reading is a way to escape the real world. Writing is a way to create a new one.”

“In something like an instant the man had changed his life. He reinvented his relationship to the world around him in a way that is considered normal only in California.”

“Maybe it’s time to find a new normal.”

“Feeling young and old at the same time is the present." From FIFTY IS THE NEW FIFTY: 10 Life Lessons for Women in Second Adulthood”