I envy the tireless intimacy of women's friendship, its lastingness, and its unbendable strength. - Pat Conroy

Not a single family finds itself exempt from that one haunted casualty who suffered irreparable damage in the crucible they entered at birth.

Teaching remains a heroic act to me, and teachers live a necessary and all-important life. We are killing their spirit with unnecessary pressure and expectation that seem forced and destructive to me. Long ago I was one of them. I still regret I was forced to leave them. My entire body of work is because of men and women like them.

I do not know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.