The Skin Of Everyday Appearances Stretched Over

But I Never Cleaned Thoroughly Enough, My Reorganization Proved To Be Haphazard, The Disgraces Came Unfailingly To Light, And It Was Clear How We Failed, How Disastrously We Fell Short Of That Ideal Of Order And Cleanliness, Household Decency Which I As Much As Anybody Else Believed In.

It Was At This Time That She Entirely Gave Up On Reading. The Covers Of Books Looked Like Coffins To Her, Either Shabby Or Ornate, And What Was Inside Them Might As Well Have Been Dust.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat. Gently Down The Stream. Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Life Is But A Dream.

In Dreams You Can Have The Feeling That You've Had This Dream Before, That You Have This Dream Over And Over Again, And You Know That It's Really Nothing That Simple. You Know That There's A Whole Underground System That You Call 'dreams,' Having Nothing Better To Call Them, And That This System Is Not Like Roads Or Tunnels But More Like A Live Body Network, All Coiling And Stretching, Unpredictable But Finally Familiar - Where You Are Now, Where You've Always Been.

She Could Not Explain Or Quite Understand That It Wasn't Altogether Jealousy She Felt, It Was Rage. And Not Because She Couldn't Shop Like That Or Dress Like That. It Was Because That Was What Girls Were Supposed To Be Like. That Was What Men - People, Everybody - Thought They Should Be Like. Beautiful, Treasured, Spoiled, Selfish, Pea-brained. That Was What A Girl Should Be, To Be Fallen In Love With. Then She Would Become A Mother And She'd Be All Mushily Devoted To Her Babies. Not Selfish Anymore, But Just As Pea-brained. Forever.