Her life, she realized, had all the charm of a steel trap.

Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms: necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets in flesh colored stockings.

She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.

All really interesting girls invent themselves.

It is a fact of big cities that one girl's darkest how is always another's moment of shining triumph, and New York is the biggest and cruelest city of them all.

The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color - oranges, pearly pinks, vibrant purples.

She considered herself unconventional.