Why?" she screamed. "Are you crazy? You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don't know the answer to something as simple as that? Why do you even have to ask? Why do you have to make a girl SAY something like this? I like you more than I like him, that's all. I wish I had fallen in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn't. I fell in love with you!

Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.

I never plan. I never know what the next page is going to be..... But that's the fun of writing a novel or a story, because I don't know what's going to happen next.

You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.

I don't know a whole lot about symbolism. There seems to me to be a potential danger in symbolism. I feel more comfortable with metaphors and similes.

Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?

No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all.