One of the great revelations of feminism may turn out to be that men need women more than women need men. Wives were economically dependent on their husbands, but men were emotionally dependent on their wives.

When you’re an only child, semi-imprisoned, books become more than paper between hard cardboard, more than the alphabet organized into words and printed on a page.

My father told me once it wasn’t true that people get more conservative over time; he said they just get tired and it’s easy when you’re tired to be agreeable.