“Of course the fall semester didn’t start for another eight weeks or so. There was always a chance we were both being overly optimistic in thinking I’d be alive when it rolled around.”

“When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and approved. Of course, love does not always bring approval: being seen may just as well lead to a thumbs-down and a season in hell.”

“I’d always thought her half-baked, but now I think they didn’t even put her in the oven.”

“If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier.”

“There are more than two chances– many more. I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.”

“I was in my forties and teaching magazine writing for the Journalism Department at the University of New Mexico. I was hired on a fluke. The professor who was scheduled to teach the course became ill, so the chair of the department, my personal friend Tony Hillerman, asked me to fill in for a semester. Tony knew I’d never been to college and didn’t care; he just knew I’d written successfully for magazines for years. The original professor never returned, and someone else replaced Tony as Chair and automatically kept me on. I discovered I loved teaching writing and started to get worried that my deep dark secret, (no college!) might be discovered, so I began taking courses under my married name, Lois Arquette, hoping I could get a degree before someone “outed” me. In the course of that endeavor, I took a juvenile literature class where they were studying “Lois Duncan books.””

“He didn’t even know what it was, Vishous.”
“The tux?” V lit a hand-rolled.
“Of course he didn’t. He’s a real male.”

“When we are overly concerned with what people think we will be controlled by the thoughts and opinions of other people.”

“There’s a theory that if you have an interesting childhood then you have enough material to last a lifetime. But that implies that art is always autobiographical when reinvention and imagination are the most important elements. But it doesn’t hurt to have a mad family! Of course I didn’t notice until I’d escaped – when I left home as a teenager on a diplomatic scholarship – how odd my family were.”

“I nodded. This was something that I really liked a lot about my mother and father. They were always thinking ahead so we didn’t make the same mistake twice.”