Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease.

"Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic."

If this was adulthood the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that she could now eat dessert without eating her vegetables.

Dying was apparently a weaning process; all the attachments to familiar people and objects have to be undone.

That's the risk you take if you change: that people you've been involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do will come along.