I don’t recall having any self-awareness about the intricacy of my stories

The term “tomboy,” one nineteenth-century author recalled, looking back at the pre–Civil War era, “was applied to all little girls who showed the least tendency toward thinking and acting for themselves.

There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to recall and dare not seek to interpret.

I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office.

You know what nostalgia is, don’t you? It’s basically a matter of recalling the fun without reliving the pain.