She felt the essence of herself pulled finer and smaller like those streams of spun glass that pull and stretch till there remains but a glimmering illusion. Neither falling nor breaking, the stream spins finer. She felt herself very small and ecstatic. Alabama was in love.

Other people's ideas of us are dependent largely on what they've hoped for.

Women, despite the fact that nine out of ten of them go through life with a death-bed air either of snatching-the-last-moment or with martyr-resignation, do not die tomorrow--or the next day. They have to live on to any one of many bitter ends.

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!

I remember every single spot of light that ever gouged a shadow beside your bones.

All I want to be is very young always and very irresponsible and to feel that my life is my own-to live and be happy and die in my own way to please myself

Life has puffed and blown itself into a summer day, and clouds and spring billow over the heavens as if calendars were a listing of mathematical errors.