The ways of God are not the ways of man, and they are most emphatically not the ways of woman.

It's somewhat daunting to reflect that Hell is -- possibly -- the place where you are stuck in your own personal narrative for ever, and Heaven is -- possibly -- the place where you can ditch it, and take up wisdom instead.

When in doubt, when flat on your back, you can look at the ceiling. Who knows what you may see, up there? Funeral wreaths and angels, constellations of dust, stellar or otherwise, the puzzles left by spiders. There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.

In reduced circumstances you have to believe all kinds of things. I believe in thought transference now, vibrations in the ether, that sort of junk. I never used to.

You don't understand much, he says. Why do you think I was lost in the impenetrable forest in the first place?

I thought of myself as an itinerant brain--the equivalent of a strolling player of Elizabethan times, or else a troubadour, clutching my university degree like a cheap lute.

Aunt Lydia, you are too good," he will beam. Too good to be true, I will think. Too good for this earth. Good, be thou my evil.

I am a believer in sensible choices, so different from many of my own. Also in sensible names for children.

In God we trust, all others pay cash.

Maybe nothing happened, maybe these emotions I remember are not the right emotions.

I wanted to ask why it had to be like this, but I already knew the answer: because it was God's plan. That was how the Aunts got out of everything

Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.