Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.

Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn't know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with.

At that moment Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn't know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with, and he reached out in order to meet her for the first time.

She was a large, disordered woman, like a child's drawing that didn't stay within the lines.

They were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived- bound, in other words, for life.

It was something every child knew how to do, maintain a direct and full connection with the world. Somehow you forgot about it as you grew up, and had to learn it again.