George Eliot

Spent most of yesterday in a place among people where it had to be asked, 'what kind of lives are these people living?'

And I was one of these people.

The woman in line in front of me had a big white bow attached to the back of her head, and the girl behind me talked on her cell phone while pushing a newborn male back and forth in a stroller.

The new mother kept saying, 'damn.' Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.

The woman with the white bow left the line after an hour and a half of waiting in it, a decision that perplexed everyone in line behind her. The new mother spoke on the phone with a colleague who, it turned out, she'd done jail time with.

'You never saw me pregnant, did you?' the young mother said. 'O damn' she said, 'that's right, damn you did see me when we were locked up.'

There are always moments in writing a book when the writer either comes close to giving up, or gives up entirely. The story the writer thinks she's telling is not the one she really means to tell at all, but another story always comes forward if the writer is willing to persist in the telling.