I Was Not Ladylike, Nor Was I

All Over China, Parents Tell Their Children To Stop Complaining And To Finish Their Quadratic Equations And Trigonometric Functions Because There Are Sixty-five Million American Kids Going To Bed With No Math At All.

The Vestibule Door Opens Onto A June Morning So Fine And Scrubbed Classira Pauses At The Threshold As She Would At The Edge Of A Pool, Watching The Turquoise Water Lapping At The Tiles, The Liquid Nets Of Sun Wavering In The Blue Depths. As If Standing At The Edge Of A Pool She Delays For A Moment The Plunge, The Quick Membrane Of Chill, The Plain Shock Of Immersion.

I Know, Speaking For Myself, No Matter What I'm Able To Do, No Matter What Book Comes Out And Ends Up On Paper, I Always Had Something Bigger And Grander In My Head.

You Grow Weary Of Being Treated As The Enemy Simply Because You Are Not Young Anymore; Because You Dress Unexceptionally.

He's One Of Those Smart, Drifty Young People Who, After Certain Deliberations, Decides He Wants To Do Something In The Arts But Won't, Possibly Can't, Think In Terms Of An Actual Job; Who Seems To Imagine That Youth And Brains And Willingness Will Simply Summon An Occupation, The Precise And Perfect Nature Of Which Will Reveal Itself In Its Own Time.