As long as one can suffer, one is living....live and suffer until life is gone.

She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it

We'll leave now, so that this moment will remain a perfect memory...let it be our song and think of me every time you hear it.

It meant that she belonged some place. She was a Brooklyn girl with a Brooklyn name and a Brooklyn accent. She didn't want to change into a bit of this and a bit of that.

The library was a little old shaby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the cmbined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.

Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.

This could be a whole life," she thought. "You work eight hours a day covering wires to earn money to buy food and to pay for a place to sleep so that you can keep living to come back to cover more wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this.