“I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point."(As quoted in Put Your Big Girl Panties on and Deal with it, Roz Van Meter, 2007)”

“Also, when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. You imagine yourself being lonely, divorced, widowed; children growing away from you, friends dying. You imagine the loss of status, the loss of desire – and desirability. You may go further and consider your own approaching death, which, despite what company you may muster, can only be faced alone. But all this is looking ahead. What you fail to do is look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from the future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously kept records – in words, sound, pictures – you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping. What was the line Adrian used to quote? 'History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”

“Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action, maybe that’s why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden.”

“The universe looks less like a big machine than a big thought.”

“I pictured a girl who made every moment, everything she touched, and everyone around her feel lighter and sweeter.“I pictured you,” he said. “I just didn’t know what you looked like.“And then, when I did know what you looked like, you looked like the girl who was all those things. You looked like the girl I loved.”

“You gonna put on your big-girl panties and fight with the boys, now?” He looked over his shoulder as if he expected me to blush or something.“Who says I wear panties?”I was certain that he flushed red this time. Laughing, I left him shaking his head and went on inside to find the Kid. We had work to do.”