There are no safe choices. Only other choices.

It keeps her purity vacum-sealed to preserve its freshness for her future husband.

Amen, sister, ... All apologies to Tom Cruise.

For the first time, I notice the lax skin at Mrs. Nightwing's jaw, the fine down that lies upon her cheek like the imprint of a childe's hand, and I wonder what it must be like watching yourself soften under the years, unable to stop it. what it's like measuring your days in perfecting girls' curtsies and drinking nightly glasses of sherry, trying to keep up with the world as it pulls you spinning into the furure, knowing you are always one step behind it.

She was too much—for Zenith, Ohio. She’d tried at times to make herself smaller, to fit neatly into the ordered lines of expectation. But somehow, she always managed to say or do something outrageous—she’d accept a dare to climb a flagpole, or make a slightly risqué joke, or go riding in cars with boys—and suddenly she was “that awful O’Neill girl” all over again.

We have traveled through space and time. We have been many places. Visited many worlds. And there is good news: the acoustics everywhere are terrific.

The mere suggestion of fame and fortune casts a glamour all its own. It is rather alarming how quickly people will turn someone else's fiction into fact in order to support their own fictions of themselves.