The One-in-a-Million Boy

by Monica Wood

“If there’s one thing the male animal cannot abide, Miss Vitkus, it’s a female with secrets.”

You know, one meets so many people, the years pass and pass, but there are certain times, certain people— . . . They take up room. So much room. I was married to Howard for twenty-eight years and yet he made only a piddling dent in my memory. A little nick. But certain others, they move in and make themselves at home and start flapping their arms in the story you make of your life. They have a wingspan. . . . I would say so, yes. I would say that you are a boy with a wingspan.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf,

Convince is for thought; persuade is for action. You couldn’t convince me that taping my horrible old-lady voice was a good idea, but you persuaded me to do it anyway, didn’t you, you little dickens?

Bleak House, by Mr. Charles Dickens.