When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover.

In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious-unless it was unavoidable. Because so much in a writer's life can be...

Nothing is more lonely than fucking 'good works.

if a man hurts you, and you show that hurt, and your eyes lock with his, he will never forgive you. For always you will be the girl he has hurt, which means you are the girl he can always hurt again....

and much more interesting.

the mirror above the bureau-a flushed blurred face. I had learned to look quickly away from that face for so often I hated what I saw.

Mrs. Erskine struck him as fierce and plain and haughty as one of those straight-backed red-haired girl-women in certain of the watercolors of Winslow Homer.

One thing it was not: love at first sight. He didn't believe in such. He wasn't a believer in romance, sentimental coincidences, "meanings" snatched out of the air. He certainly didn't believe in...

He'd never risk his life if he could avoid it. "I'd rather live, thank you." In

Silence has gathered around me like a thick, viscous water filling in a muddy footprint. Early evening, swollen sky like an eye that

It had given him a charge of entitlement and invincibility he would draw upon through life, like a limitless bank account.}

REGINALD BURNABY THE GREAT {variously identified as a defrocked Roman Catholic priest from Galway, an ex-convict from Liverpool, if not an escaped convict from that seaport city}

You keep asking me that, she said sharply. No. I don't care to notify anyone. I can't bear a crowd of relatives around me. I threw away that damned corset in a trash can. I won't return to that. There

You don't understand! Gilbert turned his back on me, but he wouldn't have turned his back on God. Ariah

She was standing with her thin arms lifted in a pose of crucifixion as the white satin gown with its myriad pearl buttons, tucks and pleats and ingenious lace trim, was fitted onto her like an...

Everything is entirely in Nature, and Nature is entire in everything. She has her center in every brute. -SCHOPENHAUER The

Ariah struck suddenly at her face with both fists. She wanted to pummel, blacken her eyes that had seen too much.

You wear out. You see too much. Every breath hurts. The