I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.

I feel like there's something terrible and wonderful and amazing that's just beyond my grasp. I have dreams about it. I do dream, by the way. It hovers over me at odd moments. And then it's gone. I feel like I'm always on the brink of something that never arrives. I want to either have it or be free of it.

You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally.

But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.

These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody's little display of genius.

We always worry about the wrong things, don't we?

I just don't feel much interested in the lifestyles of the rich and famous.