Her heart's too hurt...you frightened her. And she's such a straight lady--she sees shame where some of us just see people.

Her heart's too hurt...you frightened her. And she's such a straight lady--she sees shame where some of us just see people.

You are pure-hearted and lovely, and you have never done a moment's wrong. But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart.

It was one thing not to want a husband, I realized; it was quite another not to need one for the roof over your head, for your meat and bread, for the shoes on your feet and the coat on your back.

Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to.

How different other families were, the shape of them, the things they presumed, the children that grew up in them.

I felt freed to please myself, to find my way as I would, in a world that was much vaster than I had realized before, in which I was but one star-gleam, one wavelet, among multitudes. My happiness mattered not a whit more than the next person's - or the next fish's, or the next grass-blade's! - and not a whit less.