Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. P...ancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand--my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm's length.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My mother learned that she was carrying me at about the same time the Second World War was declared; with the family talent for ma...gic realism, she once told me she had been to the doctor's on the very day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We used chamber-pots a good deal.... My mother ... loved to repeat: "When did the queen reign over China?" This whimsical and harm...less scatological pun was my first introduction to the wonderful world of verbal transformations, and also a first perception that a joke need not be funny to give pleasure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we ...have never known them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »