It's Hard Work Being A Person, You

We Are Too Kind, Too Willing--too Unwilling Too--reaching Out Blindly With A Grasping Hand But Not Knowing How To Ask For What We Don't Even Know We Want.

A Woman's Life Isn't Worth A Plateful Of Cabbage If She Hasn't Felt Life Stir Under Her Heart. Taking A Little One To Nurse, Watching Him Grow To Manhood, That's What Love Is.

It's The Arrangement Of Events Which Makes The Stories. It's Throwing Away, Compressing, Underlining. Hindsight Can Give Structure To Anything, But You Have To Be Able To See It. Breathing, Waking And Sleeping: Our Lives Are Steamed And Shaped Into Stories. Knowing That Is What Keeps Me From Going Insane, And Though I Don't Like To Admit It, Sometimes It's The Only Thing.

I Couldn't Have Been A Novelist Without Being A Mother. It Gives You A Unique Witness Point Of The Growth Of A Personality. It Was A Kind Of Biological Component For Me That Had To Come First. My Children Gave This Other Window On The World.

And Yet, Within Her Anxiety, Secured There Like A Gemstone, She Carries The Cool And Curious Power Of Occasionally Being Able To See The World Vividly. Clarity Bursts Upon Her A Spray Of Little Stars. She Understands This, And Thinks Of It As One Of The Tricks Of Consciousness; There Is Something Almost Luxurious About It.. The Narrative Maze Opens And Permits Her To Pass Through. She May Be Crowded Out Of Her Own Life - She Knows This For A Fact And Has Always Know It - But She Possesses, As A Compensatory Gift, The Startling Ability To Draft Alternative Versions.