People who let the weak or greedy drink their blood sometimes have a need to play God.

- Helen Van Slyke

Vanity, wounded pride, rejection, self-delusion. I could recite a litany of little pinpricks that finally produce a gaping wound. That's how marriage…

- Helen Van Slyke

I should coldly, clinically think of myself and stop worrying about other people, as though I'm a necessary woman, indispensable to their happiness a…

- Helen Van Slyke

Fear is for the old. Lack of it is one of the joys of youth.

- Helen Van Slyke

Timing. We give it many names: Destiny, Fate, Kismet, the will of God. Whatever we call it, lives are changed and molded by it, in small or drastic w…

- Helen Van Slyke

Emotion seemed more valid than experience, for I had so much of the former and so little of the latter.

- Helen Van Slyke

It's especially fitting that they call a cruise ship 'she,' for she is pregnant with a thousand adult embryos who long to stay forever warm and shelt…

- Helen Van Slyke

[On parents:] They're not gods to be pleased or devils to be exorcised. They're just there, and we can only hope they understand when we seem less th…

- Helen Van Slyke

Even angels must find their wings too heavy sometimes.

- Helen Van Slyke