Millie Beggs, by the time she was forty-five, had become an emotional anarchist.

Anything incomprehensible has a sexual significance to many people under thirty-five.

Women sometimes seem to share a quiet, unalterable dogma of persecution that endows even the most sophisticated of them with the inarticulate poignancy of the peasant.

Why is there happiness and comfort and excitement where you are and no where else in the world.

And only weaklings...who lack courage and the power to feel they're right when the whole world says they're wrong, ever lose.

I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs.

Oh, we are going to be so happy away from all the things that almost got us but couldn't quite because we were too smart for them!