I Was The Basest Of Readers. All

Four Or Five Years - Nothing At All. But No One Over Thirty Could Understand This Peculiarly Weighted And Condensed Time, From Late Teens To Early Twenties, A Stretch Of Life That Needed A Name, From School Leaver To Salaried Professional, With A University And Affairs And Death And Choices In Between. I Had Forgotten How Recent My Childhood Was, How Long And Inescapable It Once Seemed. How Grown Up And How Unchanged I Was.

The Trouble With Being A Daydreamer Who Doesn’t Say Much Is That The Teachers At School, Especially Those Who Don’t Know You Very Well, Are Likely To Think You’re Rather Stupid. Or, If Not Stupid, Then Dull. No One Can See The Amazing Things That Are Going On In Your Head.

The Evasions Of Her Little Novel Were Exactly Those Of Her Life. Everything She Did Not Wish To Confront Was Also Missing From Her Novella--and Was Necessary To It.

She Returned His Gaze, Struck By The Sense Of Her Own Transformation, And Overwhelmed By The Beauty Which A Lifetime Havit Had Taught Her To Ignore.

It Marked The Beginning And, Of Course, An End. At That Moment A Chapter, No, A Whole Stage Of My Closed. Had I Known, And Had There Been A Spare Second Or Two, I Might Have Allowed Myself A Little Nostalgia.